The Inferno That is Chicago
by CSS.Stravag
Summary: As of September 2010, this story is technically outdated due to changes in Legend of the Jokers Wild. It will be revised for the updated Flight of the Jokers Wild as a combat-centric side story. Left in place for reference purposes UFN.
1. Uninvited Guests

(Side Story of the Jokers Wild: The Inferno That Is Chicago)

(Note: Read to at least Chapter 11 of Flight of the Jokers Wild before this one, it contains spoilers for prior works)

Okay then, if ever a case of user-generated feedback giving me a wealth of ideas that probably should not be, this is it. I mean, in the end I think I did the Battle of Chicago part justice, but in the final analysis I know I can do better and I need to do better. Thus, this side story. Note that this will not be completed until way later in the Chronicles of the Jokers Wild, since the absolute last chapter revolves around an event that happens significantly later in the story. The main storytelling will be told here, but how these came to be known will have to wait until long down the road (like+24000 years down the road, hehe)

If anything, this is a telling of the battle of Chicago from both the viewpoint of the Mendel forces and the Earth Alliance, showing the two different perspectives that make up the ongoing conflict, to the conclusion as the spirit of the Earth Alliance is shredded on the 55 Expressway along with their advanced prototype Gundams. Also making their debut is some of Mendel's newest weapons to be added to the fray, including the Skygrasper II and the resurgence of low-cost low-tech units like Battle Armor and Tanks. Be prepared for a tour de force of Mendel ass-kicking as the Earth Alliance desperately tries to kick them off the planet.

GENERAL DECLARATIONS (These apply to all sections, and other declarations may be added in the chapters)

Stravag does not own any part of the Gundam franchise. If I did, you could rest assured GSD would have been a lot bloodier than it was. Not quite as bad as Zeta, but close (har har har). And Stella probably would have survived (not Shin, though), and…

Also note that Stravag does not own any part of any other included works. I intend no offense or copyright challenge to any included works.

BAAAAAD LANGUAGE WARNING: Much as in real life, there will be foul language in just about every section. Even the best of us let fly a four-letter word when really pissed off, startled, or else.

VIOLENCE WARNING: This is a subset of the Jokers Wild focusing almost solely on the war effort. That means, no shortage of very brutal violence. Most of the action will be Mobile Army, but there will also be a lot of air, infantry, and even some naval action to be had. A little bit for everyone, shall we say.

ANTI-POLITICAL-CORRECTNESS WARNING: To strive to be politically correct serves no purpose, for real life makes no such distinction. I will not do so. Death before dishonor. End of story. Please don't ask me to explain this one.

And now, on with the story!

* * *

(01: Uninvited Guests)

(POV: Earth Alliance ATC Personnel, ORD Airport, Chicago, Illinois)

The few. The crazy. The Air Traffic Controllers.

"Ralph, you're out. William will be up here in about ten seconds."

"Good, I need a beer." Ralph stood up and put his hat on. "Hey, you heard that latest shit Mendel's been running? Who's frigging next, the Vatican?" 'that latest shit' was in reference to a clear warning tirade made by the Mendel Special Political Affairs Officer, Azalia Joule. Her message was to the Equatorial union, who had been off-and-on nuisance against the Mendel policies, and basically told them to shut up or get in line for an ass-kicking. After Telomeres, however, everyone except ZAFT and the Earth Alliance was listening real well to the Mendel administration.

"Don't say that too loud, they may get an idea."

"Yeah, you're right. Wouldn't want that."

"Hey, Ralph, what's goin' on?" William asks.

"Just gettin' ready to head out for a few beers. We should have a quiet night tonight, just the usual in-out-in stuff. Nothin' like three nights ago." That was a major debacle in one word, or to use the military expression, a 'clusterfuck'. The Earth Alliance had decided they were going to 'bolster the defenses' of the Chicagoland area with an additional two battalions of Mobile Suits, and made the classic mistake of air-transporting them without consulting the ATC network. Oops. Sorting that out had taken well over 12 hours and no shortage of diverted flights to Midway, South Bend and Aurora. On the flip side, though, they had gotten a good look at the Earth Alliance latest Mass-pro unit, the Windam.

The ATC staff figured if Mendel tried anything they would have to start with O'Hare, at the least as a landing field for their Dropships. That made them first responders for any Mendel bullshit, which made them mildly important in both allied and enemy eyes.

"Huh?" William looked down the stairs of the tower to where the door was. "Funny, I thought the door closed faster than that."

"Nah, just like the rest of this ancient tower, it's a piece of junk. I'm out of here, guys, later."

"See ya tomorrow." Ralph was out the door fast enough.

Wilhelm had to stop and reflect that this was going to be like just about any other day, all work and no play. His shift started at 0600 and ended at 1600, ten hours on duty that would test his patience more than his nerves or his skills, especially if nothing major was scheduled to happen.

"Uh, what's that?" William points to a series of blips on the military search radar screen. Since O'Hare is a secondary military facility (meaning that Air Force pukes could use it for refueling and basic repairs, and sometimes did), they had a set of Military Radar systems and radios. For most, there is a bit of confusion as to how civilian and military radar differs. For civilian application, a civilian radar looks for a device called a transponder in an aircraft. Military radar actually puts out a signal looking for the aircraft itself.

In this case, the military radar was seeing something, but the civilian radars were not.

"Attention unidentified craft at 37 Kilometers outside ORD VOR, this is ORD ATC. You have no squawk active. Please state craft type, flightplan, and cargo, over."

"ORD ATC, this is unidentified contact. Craft Type Gamma-Xray-9900-Delta-Victor, common name Gundam X Divider, Flightplan...looks like straight drop to 63rd and Maple in Aurora, Illinois, cargo is three cans of whoopass to be delivered to Blue Cosmos and allied parties, over."

"Oh, shit," William says automatically. He knew what the Gundam X Divider is, Mendel defined it as a heavy close-quarters Gundam for use in melee or urban environments and battles. Inasfar as things were concerned, they sent it to the right place, you didn't get much more urban than Chicago and its suburbs. The catch was, there wasn't really shit in the area to stop it from landing and beginning to entrench itself and the other forces it was coming down with.

"Put out an alert. We have incoming Mendel forces in Chicago."

"Already done it, Will. The Colonel in command of this area says he'll send some forces to try and stop them from gaining a foothold, but he isn't making bets." Why was fairly obvious, since most of Mendel's forces were absurdly resistant to incoming fire, and nothing was worse in that respect than the Armored Marines.

" 'Some forces', he says. Sure. Give them some warm-up target practice. Smart."

"Oh, fuck."

"What?" William asks.

"Look...behind you."

William did not have to. The sound of a very large firearm bolt being released was enough of a tale that he knew what was standing behind him. A Ghost. The very creepy, invisible mother-fuckers of Mendel that everyone and their grandma was afraid of, because there was theoretically no way to detect them, unless you were Mendel and knew their secrets.

"Just shoot me and be done with it," William knew this would come some day, though he was expecting them to just completely destroy the ATC tower, not try to take it over.

"Only if you're Blue Cosmos." To William, the voice sounded a lot like a twenty-something country girl. It definitely did not sound like a cold, merciless assassin. "Otherwise, you have a job to do, Air Traffic Controller."

"Huh?" That caused William to whip around on her, and much to his dismay she had a MAR-type assault rifle combat slung right now, as well as four other small arms and something that looked a lot like a miniature tank cannon depending from her right upper arm.

"You have civilian aircraft to land. Just keep two runways open for the incoming dropships, unless you want the dropships to land on a plane, that is." The voice was a guy's voice, and still invisible. They had two Ghosts in the tower, maybe more, and one of them was still invisible. That made resistance almost assuredly fatal.

"Why should I cooperate with you?"

The Ghost shrugs, a gesture amplified by her armor. "Think about it. Cooperate, and you will be pulling hazard pay for your services. And we ain't stingy, unlike your superiors. Don't cooperate, well, you can be replaced. Quite easily, actually. And then there is the fact that Blue Cosmos and their protectors and supporters are about to get the shaft, so I don't think it is a hard choice."

She was right, and wrong at the same time. In terms of cold logic, she was right, triple overtime or death is a dead simple choice. The matter that she grossly overlooked, however, is that one's allegiance is not something easily violated, and after a fashion these two were government employees. Magi tended to overlook such things, since allegiance within the Empire was very rarely questioned or called into play.

In the end, cold logic overcame any sense of duty he thought he had for the Earth Alliance, since his bosses were assholes and probably would not survive the matter and mostly because he had a family to feed and provide for in the end. "All right, how many dropships and how long?"

"Two, for now, in four minutes."

William takes a seat and starts scanning his incoming boards. "That I can do. We'll put them down on Runway 6 left and 7 left, that way they're close to each other and we'll just leave them there. We'll land the civilian traffic on the rest of the airfield."

"What, you're going to work with these shitheads? What are you on, man? Blue Cosmos will kill your family!"

"I get this strange feeling that between now and hell freezing over, Blue Cosmos is not going to win against Mendel." William changes a few settings on one of the radars. "And, at the end of the day, triple overtime is a helluva lot of pay." He raises an eyebrow toward the visible Ghost. "That is what Hazard Pay is for civilians in Mendel, correct?"

"Aff." Military normally did not pull hazard pay, but they did have a higher overall average salary than many civvie positions.

"Well, our Gundams and 'mechs are down in Aurora, the fun is just beginning and you got a bird's eye view of it."

"KLM-402, this is ORD ATC, you are cleared on runway 3 Right. Set ILS to Auto on channel 12, over," William says, almost completely blocking out the Ghost. She takes the hint, simply watching as the collection of ATC workers (six on duty right now) did their jobs. After a fashion, she had to realize that this was just about as frenetic as air traffic control on the _Mjolnr_, the one time she had been on the bridge as an escort to Lady Cagalli.

"This is Ghostrider to ORD ATC, coming down hot, ETA 3.5 minutes. Identify craft type as _Guild II_-class Dropship, military cargo. I daresay you have been briefed on procedure, quiaff?"

"Ghostrider, this is ORD ATC, flight controller Wilhelm. I will be guiding your craft in as per arrangements with ground assets. Ghostrider, you are cleared for landing on runway 6 left, your second Dropship is cleared on 7 left. Declare your pattern status, over."

"ORD, Ghostrider declares full nominal descent, no enemy presence in the air at this time. We register 62 civilian contacts within ten flying minutes of ORD. We are on track with 1-5-0 seconds to touchdown."

"Ghostrider, ORD rogers your last. Bring her down nice and easy, pilot. ATC has the welcome mat out for you, over."

"Ah, a logical bunch among the civilian ranks. I may have to buy you guys a round of beers after this fracas is over. Ghostrider is clear on this channel, over."

It did not take long for the military radar to pick up the Dropships, two very large blips coming in from the north with a direct course for the airport.

"Ghostrider, this is ORD ATC. I have visual, though I don't know the first thing about how to land a Dropship so I can't advise on procedure. Just bring her in smooth and steady, pilot." He remembers something he wanted to ask a Mendel flight crew: "Ghostrider, how much debris is your engines going to kick up?"

"ORD, a _Guild II_-class will turn 100 meters of ground under it into a 10-meter-deep crater unless we're blasting off from or landing on solid concrete. If your runways are by the book, you should have nothing to worry about. Side-blast debris from the engines should be minimal from concrete as well, over."

"Roger that, Ghostrider. Bring her in smooth, we have a pair of charters coming in on 6 Right and 7 Right, over."

"Aff, understood. We should have engines off before they touchdown. Ghostrider is beginning landing cycle at this time." The landing gear of the two Dropships came out, large column-like legs themselves that were ten meters wide. After the Dropship landed, it would be sitting on its oblate bottom where the six engine nacelles were, balanced and braced by the eight legs.

The evolution of landing a DropShip was an interesting thing to watch, since it more or less hovered in sideways over the runway and then settled down fairly calmly, though even without hostile action it still made an impressive impact sound as its metal base touched down on the runway that was only slightly wider than it was. The whole Dropship extended out over the accompanying taxiways a good deal; at a guess, William figured it was just slightly less than 175 meters wide and well over 400 meters tall, the whole thing bristling with guns and doors for releasing the units held inside.

"Hey, don't you guys have some kind of rule of thumb for assaulting a Dropship?" One of the other ATC officers asks the Ghost visible in the room.

"Yeah, sort of; it's an equation. The minimum amount of 'mechs needed to take down a Dropship is 1 for every 500 tons of ship, divided by the amount of times you want to get butt-fucked in the operation. Basically, you don't assault a Dropship, doing so is asking for a swift and very messy death."

"Then, what did you guys do against the Negaverse when you had to take down a Dropship?"

"We, as in the ground forces, did nothing. We either did the job with suborbital bombardment, a warship or monitor, or a shitload of artillery. Think about it, that is the largest of combat Dropships ever implemented, it has over 130 guns on the outside and can carry up to 375 Omnimechs, mobile suits, or Gundams. It is a fortress with engines strapped to it. To destroy that ship, you'd need an equivalent force to what it carries plus forces to assault the ship, and the butcher bill for something like that is insane. You might win, yeah, but how much of your force is going to come back after the job is done?"

During her speech, the second Dropship had landed and was now disgorging Marines, which the first ship had done as well, though the first was unloading a combination of ground vehicles, Marines, and some Mobile Suits. The tanks coming out of the bay of the first Dropship were immense, easily far larger and more menacing than the Linear Tanks used by the Alliance. Some of the tanks even had Armored Infantry riding along on their back decks, attached to a set of locking lugs that would keep them from falling off if the tank made any sudden jolts.

Also of significant strangeness was a profusion of lighter vehicles that moved like hovercraft, with weapons and armor that definitely made them combat vehicles; these immediately spread out and forward, toward the peripheries of O'Hare as picket-guards, moving at blazing-fast speeds that no Mobile Suit could match without heavy use of its thrusters. One appeared as if its main gun was a single large Gauss Rifle; another appeared to have two large missile packs and a laser on a turret assembly, as well as two much smaller four-tube missile packs on the main body, and yet another type of the hovercraft appeared to have a large laser weapon as its main gun, accompanied by a ten-silo missile pack and a two-silo missile pack.

"Jesus H. Christ, what is that?" One of the ATC officers points to a vehicle coming out of the second Dropship. It was a monstrous sucker; if the largest that had come out of the first Dropship was 100 tons and about 22 meters long and 14 meters wide, this one was half again wider, slightly longer, and had a turret that looked almost as big as the Alacorn IIM that it was compared to.

"That is a Guardian Missile Carrier. Slow-ass bastard, but it has more armor than eight average Mobile Suits and 210 missile silos spread across three range brackets. Weighs like 165 tons or something like that, and more than a quarter of that is armor."

"Holy shit," the same controller says, still staring at it with his binoculars. "Man, I am not seeing this shit right."

"Fuck, a tank with two turrets? That's nuts shit!" Another ATC officer says. The lower-mounted of the turrets had an ERPPC and a three-silo missile launcher, the higher-mount turret had a gauss rifle and two of the three-silo missile launchers. The unit also had three CIWS turret assemblies, one on the front, and one on each side. "God, don't you guys do anything by the rules?"

The still-invisible Ghost barks a sharp laugh at that. "We play by our own rules and piss on the competition," he says with a hint of humor. "Those are the Monarch Assault Tanks. They may not be as powerful as some other platforms, but they can do the job against all lesser units."

"Wilhelm, we're getting major interference on our equipment, man."

"Angel ECM systems," the Ghost notes. "Our advanced ECMs must be jamming up your equipment. Wait one." She turns off her external speakers and activates her radio. "Ghostrider, this is Phantom, request all allied forces turn off electronic jamming equipment at this time, it is interfering with ATC."

"Roger that, Phantom, will relay the request." Ten seconds later, almost all the static in the radar sets cleared up, though it would flicker temporarily as a unit came online with its ECM and then shut it off.

"This whole thing is just administrative for you guys," Wilhelm notes.

Silence, from the Ghost for a few moments. "You were mil, were you not?"

"432nd Air Assault Wing, out of Chehalis airbase. After Mendel crashed the final battle of Yakin Doe, I pulled the plug since I knew this was coming." His gesture was to the floor, though meant the evolving invasion of Terra.

"A wise move."

"You guys bring your air along with you, or are you going to everything from space?" He pauses; "Sorry, stupid question."

"Neg, not a stupid one. You would know just by sitting here and observing, regardless. The answer is both. Some will come from the _Nirvana Celeste_, others will come from the airport facilities here." The Ghost folds her arms over her chest. "Just sit back and watch, this is going to be rather entertaining."

A few of the ATC personnel look to each other, wondering in what fashion someone would consider an invasion and siege battle something even close to 'fun'.

-x-x-x-

The 24th Technical Regiment, Atlantic Federation Ground Forces, had been called to duty. There was activity in Chicago, no real warning as to what was happening, though the estimate was that Aurora had become a Mobile Suit battlefield. Thus, 1st Batallion, 24th Technical was arrayed forward, lancing in from the outskirts of the Chicago metropolitan area toward the likely great strongpoint of any Mendel invasion, being O'Hare International Airport and Regional Departures (ORD to the air traffic control system). Expected resistance could be anything up to a mixed Galaxy of forces, including the dread weapon Gundam. CentCom did not believe they had enough assets, even after the reinforcements, to drop more than one Galaxy into Chicago, since they would need the forces elsewhere for operations on the east coast of North America and in Iceland.

The 24th had initially cut its teeth in battles in Panama, in the last war, and in skirmishes with forces of ZAFT that were trying to gain a foothold in California. In both cases the battles had been rather inconclusive, pointless footnotes on the much greater war and its outcome. Win or lose seemed a rather pointless turn of events in such a case, since the outcome of the war was not even marginally affected by it. This time around, however, every trooper from the Colonel down wanted to nail Mendel to the barn door, as proof that it did not matter where you came from, the Earth Alliance was better than anyone who tried them.

The 1st Batallion, numbering about 400 personnel, consisted of the main armored fist of the Regiment, which was more along the lines of a ACR (1) than a Technical force. The 1st had 80 Mobile Suits, 68 of the Dagger-L model and 12 of the new Windam model, armed with beam weapons. The other 320 personnel were split between the various companies as support personnel, and a pair of rather antiquated towed field guns in 105mm caliber, that still had limited effectiveness against armored targets, or so the commanders had said. The only thing they fancied using them on were the Armored Marines, and that only with good cover and concealment. The barracks rumors about the Armored Marines, of how they could take incredible amounts of abuse and carried miniature tank guns on their own, was enough to scare shitless the personnel of 1st.

And, if anything, the Marines would be involved arse-deep in taking Chicago.

Southward about two kilometers was the 2nd Battalion, a force comprised of four companies, two of Dagger-L units and two of the Linear Tank, which nobody was expecting to be of any real use against the Mendel forces, but something is better than nothing, which is better than a stick in the eye. But not by much, except when dealing with Mendel, because their stick to someone's eye usually does not miss.

Third Batallion, along with the Regiment's artillery forces, were hanging back and roughly in between the two advancing batallions, so that when contact was established the whole force of the Regiment could be quickly brought to bear on the enemy forces and this job could be done as expediently as possible. This was wagered against the possibility that a competent enemy, with their own artillery forces, could barrage an area and get kills at random, depending on how powerful their artillery was.

Reginald (Reggie) Lance had once heard of a Mendel affectation, called the Long Tom, a cannon believed so accurate that it could put a shell into the same impact point four times in a row. Details were sketchy about the Long Tom, but the raw fact that he knew of it was that this was not a piece carried by a Battlemech or Omnimech. They had a different artillery piece for that, something that could also be carried in single shots by an Aerofighter, or so the rumors went. Much of what the Mendel forces could do was still a mystery to everyone, supposedly including the ZAFT forces that they cross-trained with. The rest was some form of arcane half-cracked bullshit that they picked up from some group known as the Clans, which they honed in an impossibly-long war against another Star Empire.

_Yeah, right. Posers, they don't know shit about how to really slog it_, Reginald thinks within the confines of his own mind. _Ten bucks, they just got lucky at Yakin Doe. Or it was that warship of theirs, that nobody can match_.

"Think you ready, Reggie?"

"Hell yeah, bring 'em on. I want to test this new Thunderbolt Launcher on them, see how they like a taste of their own medicine, eh?" His left-arm shield was on a swivel-mount, so it would hang down while his left arm held the Thunderbolt Launcher, a rather squat missile launcher that also braced on his shoulder. It was designed to be fired and forgotten, and recovered after the battle was completed to be reloaded. Basically, it was a short-term weapon designed to punch holes in the enemy, be dropped, and the Mobile Suit would go in close or continue with its beam rifle.

"1st, this is command, we have a report of a sensor system in your area, be warned that the enemy may know where you are."

"2nd command to Regiment, I have what looks like a Mendel light 'mech haulin' ass dead east as fast as possible. A couple of my pilots tried shooting it, but they missed. They know we are here, Colonel."

"Roger that, 2nd. All battalions continue with operation plan as stated. We should be inside their lines before a response force is in place. They can't have been on the ground that long that they can get a decent defense set up."

"Uh, Colonel, I don't know how you define 'decent defense', but I got a company of enemy 'mechs headed right at me. Smallest one looks like a Cauldron-born, sir." They had some briefing as to what Mendel Battlemechs looked like, though their capabilities were still a mystery.

"And the biggest?" The Colonel replies rather innocently.

"Dire Wolf, Atlas, or AtmaWeapon, take your pick." The speaker, Reggie's best friend in the battalion, did not sound pleased at all.

"Stand on-line, commence standoff fire. Cut 'em to ribbons at range."

"And pray they can't do the same thing to us. Artillery, commence area denial barrage grid ref 282 by 965."

"Artillery rogers request. Firing five salvos." Five salvos of 155mm artillery was a hellishly powerful barrage, but there was some question as to how effective it would be against Omnimechs, the supposed pinnacle of the Mendel Armoed Forces' ground combat capability. It was often said that some Omnimechs could outdo Gundams on the ground, which made them terrible foes indeed, for a Gundam was a foe that they all dreaded.

There were fifteen of the enemy, headed right in at the front of the 2nd Battalion without any form of reserve. The Mobile suits had begun firing at them well over four kilometers away, where they were just barely visible as they ducked between buildings at a steady walking pace. Whatever hesitation one may have showed was covered by the whole of the unit advancing on them in a steady fashion. At 2.5 kilometers, when the Earth Alliance 2nd Battalion was just beginning to hit effectively, the Omnimechs opened up with their long range weapons, ER Large lasers, Long-Range Missiles, Advanced Tactical Missiles, ER-PPC weapons, low-caliber Autocannons. And even after their first barrage, they continued marching inward, straight at the throat of the enemy.

"Lieutenant Colonel, we got incoming!" Reggie's 'wingman' shouts as he notices the movement in the blocks ahead of them. They were a helluva lot closer, apparently using the battle to the south as screening and distraction. These were medium and heavy 'mechs, not as tall on firepower or armor, but faster to close and beat the shit out of the enemy.

"This is Regiment to Battalion commands, our artillery force is down. Their artillery fired first and scratched them all off the map. Hold your positions, I am calling for air and artillery support form Dekalb and Michigan." Even this long after the dissolution of the United States of America, the personnel still referred to locations by their old American names.

"For what we are about to receive..." Reggie mutters under his breath, as he was staring at five monster shots coming in with missile contrails behind. This was the Arrow-IV that the Mendel Forces carried, a 'light' artillery piece with a range of five Grids in their parlance. The shells were Cluster munitions, they broke open at 800 meters away and 200 meters over the ground, and the bomblets that fell to the ground had a footprint of over 300 meters wide per missile, and the patterns overlapped.

His shield blocked most of the incoming crap, but not all of it. What did hit his Mobile Suit immediately jammed his right leg, tore a chunk out of his right shoulder, and caused his radar to black out. His wingman fared worse, as the pattern was centered on his unit and he took several dozen hits; his Dagger L went down in a crumpled wreck, having lost both arms, the head, and taken several armor-penetrating hits to the chest. Down the north side of the front he could see that fate repeated several times, and this was simply the first enemy wave.

A rather large explosion hit behind Reggie's Mobile Suit, throwing it forward and down. Whatever it was, it was a very high-pressure explosion that threw him forward, not something that you can stand several hits from, much less a direct hit. When his unit stood up, he looked backwards to what it was, and the sight shocked him shitless. Two of the Dagger L units from 3rd Company were literally blown in half, and there was a stray leg just standing straight up; from damage to buildings and trees, Reggie could only guess that whatever had hit the hapless Dagger L had hit it directly and more or less completely obliterated it from the knees up, as well as having enough leftover fury to knock his thrusters out and kill off two other Dagger L units.

His unit and view centered forward once more, looking toward the advancing enemy. They were much closer now, as a Bushwacker passed from behind a medium-rise building and centered on him. The four machine guns and ER Large Laser spoke, immediately putting a barrage right into the shield that Reggie had set forward just in time, and though the laser did not fire again the machine guns continued, the slugs hammering into the shield with ferocity that belied their firing platform. The Mendel (Magi) Bushwacker used either 10mm BG, something akin but slightly smaller than the .50-caliber, a 15mm MG, or a 20mm MG, and the latter was rumored to be a threat to even Mobile Suits. In Reggie's estimate, the rumors were not all that far off the truth, because his shield indicators were creeping toward red at a significant pace.

**WRAAM**. Whatever hit his unit's shield apparently did so with tremendous force, as the shield was ripped completely clear of the forearm mounting and sent caroming right into the side of a ten-story apartment complex. As his vision came to, Reggie could see part of the tell-tale gauss trail that led right back to the right arm of the enemy unit, which meant that the enemy was driving either the XC1G or XC1GS variant of the Magi Bushwacker, the former having a Gauss Rifle and standard LRM launchers, the latter having a Gauss Rifle and Streak LRM launchers. There was a variant that had the traditional Autocannon, though he figured he would not see it any time soon.

Reggie's arms seemed to move of their own accord, as he centered his manual targeting pipper on the enemy unit and fired from both triggers at the same time. The beam hit first, scoring into the rotary missile launcher in the left arm, though he could not tell offhand if it had any major effect. The first of his experimental Thunderbolt copies failed to guide properly and passed between its legs, detonating harmlessly behind it. The second beam shot hit in the upper left missile pack, though it did not penetrate nor did it cook off a missile. The second missile struck just left of the centerline of the 'mech and in the upper torso area, immediately ripping a serious chunk out of the armor plates there.

The enemy pilot fired next as he sidestepped his 'mech past Reggie's third beam. Three missiles from the left arm joined five from the left-torso missile pack just as Reggie pulled the trigger on his last missile, and the missiles guided in clean, without hesitation. Reggie's unit took all eight of the incoming in the center and left torso, immediately knocking his Mobil Suit down and running several of his indicators red. Strangely, though, after a few moments to reorient on what he was seeing out of his monitors (those that had not busted from the sheer impact), he saw a white-and-red striped parachute with some kind of cylindrical pod depending from it floating to the ground.

With some serious cadging, Reggie was able to get his Dagger L to stand up again, and laying in front of him at 600 meters was the dead form of the Mendel Bushwacker, a gaping hole in its left side and a blown out rear torso armor testament that he put his last missile on target, and that Mendel's forces were not invincible, even when wagered against an outdated Mobile Suit of the Earth Alliance.

His reverie was short-lived. What stepped out behind a building and directly behind the defeated Bushwacker was something far nastier in the confines of a city: a Hunchback IIM. The single 300mm armor-penetrating slug it fired from the cannon over its right shoulder immediately knocked his Mobile Suit down and put everything on the engine board of his unit in the red. The slug had tore into the center of his suit and blew out the back, it had that much energy behind it. His suit powered down in less than three seconds, now incapable to the battle because there was a gaping hole where more than half of his capacitor had been.

Reggie pulled the 'oh shit' handle, the handle that blew the explosive bolts around the cockpit so he could escape his incapacitated suit. With his cockpit vented to the outside world, he stood up on the back of his seat and levered his way out into the fresh air of Chicago. Or what would have been fresh air, if it did not smell like missile propellant and gunpowder mixed with burning fuel and fried electronics for ambience. He also got a whiff of smoke, as a fire had been started by the hot barrel of his beam carbine, which had landed on top of a stack of wood pallets that were now burning.

The Hunchback that had killed his unit was now just walking past his Mobile Suit's carcass, though it stopped, looked left and down directly at him, and Reggie could still see flecks of the propellant for that 300mm cannon on the barrel's rim. The torso centered after a few moments and it continued walking, apparently not severely concerned with a living pilot of a dead machine. It was followed rather closely by another medium 'mech, the Centurion IIM. The two diverged as the Centurion put a pair of three-round bursts of its 100mm Ultra Autocannon downrange, gunning for a Windam that had the Sword Strike pack attached. Three of the slugs hit and tore into its shield, immediately busting the shield in half and detonating the missiles on the back plate of it, just before the pilot fired a barrage of missiles at the Windam and ducked behind a building again. Reggie got the feeling the missiles were aimed indifferently, as they impacted in the street as much as they did actually hit the Windam, though the three hits tore large rents in the armor of the targeted unit nonetheless, which Reggie knew was not something that normal missiles did.

The last unit to stomp by was an Axman IIM, combining the sleek and menacing Inner Sphere form with advanced Clan and Magi technology and serving it up in one helluva nasty package for both long-range and close-quarters battle. The Windan that had been started in on by the Centurion was its next target, as it brought up the combat-engineered left arm and fired the three laser weapons on it, the Large Pulse Laser, with its maroon beam coloring, and two Medium Pulse Lasers, each with an emerald beam that did not miss at the grossly short range between the two units. The three beams hit, followed by a pair of repeats from each of the Medium Pulse, even as it charged down the enemy at full walking speed. The final blast from the Large Pulse Laser tore off the right arm of the Windam and dropped it to the ground, as the Axman brought its ax up for use on the almost-dead enemy. The blade came down, straight into the head of the Windam, and did not stop its transit until it was half-buried in the chest of the Windam. The Earth Alliance mobile suit hit the ground like a sack of potatoes, its neural linkage surely severed and nevermore would it move.

Knowing instinctively that he was now behind enemy lines, Reggie headed forward to the building where his shield had been blown clear of his Dagger L and entered the bottom floor through some broken windows. His hold-out pistol came out, though he knew it would not be any good against Mendel's feared Armored Marines, as there were tales of Blue Cosmos pricks that had been caught in hand of a Marine that had fired the pistol into the visor of a Marine's armor and it did nothing more than infuriate the Marine. And that incident had also proved that a Eugenic Armored Marine had the strength to rip an arm off an unarmored person. Hearing that had run shivers up his spine, back in barracks, back when this whole nightmare was theoretical. Today, it was a lead pit in his stomach, knowing that he could end up dead for his allegiance.

A nightmare it had indeed become. On the flip side, a transport of infantry headed westward, away from the centroid of Chicago, had beckoned him quickly into their transport, apparently they had seen him get loose from his downed machine and run into the building. He sprinted the ten meters to the truck and jumped in the load bed as quickly as he could, since he could hear machine guns down the way and they were approaching.

Thankfully, this time he was able to hitch a ride with some retreating Earth Alliance infantry. _Tomorrow may be a different story, _he told himself within the confines of his own mind. At the least, however, he had a tomorrow. That fact alone beat the alternative.

-x-x-x-

William had called home to make sure his family was all right; some of the fighting had been in the area of where he lived, out in the suburbs. They had called back with a rather unexpected tale: they were all right, but an Earth Alliance main battle tank had driven through their house the long way, then had been shot and disabled by an Armored Marine point from across the street. The phone his wife had called on was the only surviving phone, one out in the garage, where the kids were being seen to by a Mendel Armored Marine corpsman (2) for some very minor cuts and a fractured wrist, from when the tank had crashed through their bedroom.

The conversation was bound to take the turn that he did not want to.

"How's things going out at the airport, honey? I kept hearing wild rumors on the television that some kind of ship had landed at O'Hare or at Midway or something like that..." He did not immediately reply, which elicited her next: "Honey, is something wrong?"

"I'll be straight about it. Yes, a ship landed here. Mendel controls the airport and everything within a good two kilometers of it."

"Wh—what's happening? Have you been arrested? Are they torturing you or anything? Are they killing civilians by firing squad? I know they'd do--"

"Stop. Now. They have done nothing like that, Brittany. These guys are professionals, not thugs and not monsters. They're keeping it on the level. They shot a couple Earth Alliance soldiers after they landed, and they had a heavy run-and-gun action going on down in the suburbs about thirty minutes ago, but that is it."

"But—but haven't they started executing Naturals yet? I thought--"

"They don't believe in that, Brit. They ain't like the hard-asses in ZAFT or the Blue Cosmos pricks. They never have been."

"Amen to that," The visible Ghost says.

"Then, what's going on? What about the television stations? What about the radio stations? I haven't been able to get anything to pick up!"

"Someone pulled the plug. Hold one." He looked to the Ghost. "Have you guys been messin' with the television or radio stations?"

"Uh, good question. Let me pass it on up." Thirty seconds elapsed, then: "We have a couple teams headed into some of the buildings to check on them, actually my Galaxy Commander is asking the same question right now, who's screwing with the stations?"

"Uh, honey, they don't know who's knocking the civilian stations offline."

"THEY? YOU ASKED ONE OF THEM?" Even at normal hearing levels, both the Ghosts had heard that. As did the other controllers, two more of which had been called in to help with the way Mendel's aero assets were starting to make the skies rather crowded, and this was without having even put their helos up. Yet.

"Well why the hell not? They ain't going to lie to anyone, it won't do them any good in the long run."

"They've lied to everyone from the governments on down since they got here two years ago! They can't be trusted!"

"Better the demon she knows than the ones from afar," William says while holding his hand over the reciever. This drew snickers from one of the Ghosts as well as his neighboring ATC officers. "Honey, just take the kids over to the neighbor's house, if it ain't been flattened yet. They'll put us up until we can get our stuff replaced, okay? Look, I'll be off-duty in eight hours, I'll come straight home at that time, okay?"

A reply was ten seconds in the coming. "You're collaborating with them."

"No shit, Brit. It's either triple overtime or being jailed for dereliction of duty." He covers the reciever. "I'm right about that, right?"

"Yes and no. Yes, it would be if you were Mendel, but you're a civilian so you can't be arrested because you don't have an assigned military duty post."

"...I'm taking the kids out to my sister's in Colorado. Don't come looking for us. I won't have then anywhere near a coordinator sympathizer."

"Oh, for the love of—Is there anything you can do?"

"Neg. She has done nothing illegal, yet. If she tries denying you the right to see your children, for one example, she could get time in bond."

"I take it you've been there, done that?"

"Aff. My ex was a right and proper wench about the matter. She tried disappearing without any form of authorized sevarance, and sure as hell without my permission. The Administrative court officer had her for lunch and crapped out a brick with her name on it. Kidnapping, abuse of her ward, fleeing a summons to court, interdimensional flight to avoid prosecution, she got mulched by the system. 225 years total term of bond. Last I checked, she was on year 62. It's going to be a long time before she could even begin to contest her actions. But wait, my four kids and I are here, not back in 2SL-12 Multimage Empire. She loses by circumstance the whole way around."

"So, in essence, if she follows through with this, without my permission, she's hamburger?"

"If she splits your family up without a consensual, written agreement, or without a court order to that effect, it's kidnapping and abuse of her ward. Both of those are 100 years minimum term of bond. And in the case of Abuse of Ward, the judges are normally pissed off enough by those charges to have someone mandatory rejuvenated to serve their full sentence."

"And how could she have the court give such an order?" William wanted all his bases covered for this issue.

"If she could prove you were a wife-beater, for example, she could have the marriage annulled and your ass brought up on charges. She'd have to prove it, though, and that usually requires some form of Psionic Review or investigation. That isn't going to happen here, any two-year academy grad would see through her ploy faster than reading a porno mag. Not to mention, the Strategic Psionic would have her ass for lunch if she tried—huh, wait one."

"Huh?" He was gestured silent by the now-visible second Ghost. This one had a heavier weapons compliment than the first of the Ghosts, including an array of the Longbolt missiles.

"William, your last name."

"Jenose."

"Wife Brittany Jenose, right? Two daughters?"

"Yes, has something happened?"

"Aff, wait one. I'm pirating a feed for info right now."

He did, though the tension was beyond visible in his features.

"Okay, here's the scoop. Your wife went crazy and tried shooting up a group of refugees, shouting something about them being traitors or something. They had to take her down, hard. Your daughters are alive, one of them took some shrapnel to an arm, nothing major. The other one spot-on requested to join the Mendel Armed Forces."

"And?"

"Well, don't know if anyone said she could join, but they're both being checked out by a MedTech right now."

"Oh."

"Go and put your family back together. I relieve you."

"What?"

"You are relieved, William. I will take your place. Move out," the Ghost orders a lot more insistently.

"Yes, sir." (X Ref, see footnotes)

-x-x-x-

Reggie wasn't entirely sure how he got himself into these messes, but this time he thought he had bought the farm.

A Mendel attack helicopter had been patrolling in the area where he was trying to retreat through, and instead of keeping a low profile one of the dicks in the truck had decided to fire a RPG at it. If he had hit, the whole matter would have been a different story, but the soldier missed by three times the length of the chopper. The chopper did not miss, however, when it pirouetted in and fired a short burst of 32.5mm autocannon at the otherwise civilian truck. The truck was shot, and Reggie was one of three that lived for the misdeeds of that one soldier. The other two were a very timid, very green lady and a mobile suit mechanic, both of which had taken a hint of shrapnel from the attack. Reggie had taken a steel shard about as long as his hand, that had entered his left leg and was sticking out both the front and the back of his thigh.

And Reggie had little doubt that they would have called in the Infantry to verify everyone was dead.

"Chopper's gone," The Mechanic says. "God damn it, how the hell can they have this much firepower?"

"That's just an attack chopper, man. You should have seen their Battlemechs in action."

"You a pilot? What with?" The lady asks.

They were in a low urban structure right now, and there were a few civilians in as well, just hoping (and praying) that they weren't killed before the night was up. Across the shopping mall's parking lot were two dead Dagger L units and a dead Windam.

"I was a Dagger driver. Went in bare-bones, carrying a new, experimental Thunderbolt Launcher, similar to the Thunderbolt-20 that Mendel has one some of their Battlemechs. I killed a Bushwacher with it, but before I could even laugh a Hunchback popped out and blew a hole in my Dagger big enough that the three of us could walk through it." The mechanic low-whistled in amazement; the lady looked even more pale in the midday sun.

"You mean...that...Hunchback...can kill a Mobile Suit in one shot?"

"Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. Hell, that Bushwacker I tangled with blew my shield clear off my Dagger's wrist mount with one shot of its Gauss Rifle, which is a helluva lot more common weapon for Mendel than their Autocannons. Their missiles are hellish as well, incredibly damaging, something on the order of the Wurger missiles carried by the Windams. These guys're serious players. And to think I thought they were posers a few hours ago..."

"Posers? How in the hell do you get that?" The Mechanic asks with a tone that clearly stated that he thought the pilot in their midst was an airhead.

"It's bullshit now, of course, after getting my ass handed to me with a hole in it, and then watching how they fight, it's natural to them. They can switch off from one unit to the next as they weave between buildings like they're being expertly played in a massive game of chess. Like right after I jumped ship, I watched a Centurion fire two bursts of autocannon and a half-dozen missiles at a Windam, then duck down a side-road to let an Axman come straight down the street, chain-firing its laser weapons into the Windam. The gap between the end of the first and the start of the second was a second and a half. Twenty bucks, that Windam pilot never knew what log-chain just hit him."

"Damn, that kind of fighting takes expert quarterbacking or expert training, or both," the Mechanic notes.

"You sound like an old hand, I guess."

"I was in the first one. Drove an Aile Dagger. Got my ass handed to me by a straight-white-painted Neue Ziel. Come to find out a few months later, back when I was still in traction for my busted back, that the pilot that ownzed me was Gerald Lightbringer, the great ace of Mendel and the Magi. They call him Angel Zero, and his three lancemates were Angel One, Angel Two, and Angel Three. I thought I heard that Angel One was killed by one of ZAFT's aces, but I don't really know if that happened or not. Kinda sounds like propaganda if you ask me, the kind to raise spirits and get it through people's minds that Mendel ain't invincible."

"But...they aren't invincible, if he took one down, didn't you?" The infantry grunt lady asks.

Reggie snorts rather loudly. "They don't have to be. They just have to kill more of us than we kill of them. Oh, and they have to somehow take Blue Cosmos out of the picture, which for them they probably have three or four plans for that."

"I don't know about any plans against Blue Cosmos. That's way above our level." Eyes and sights were on the speaker, one Armored Marine among ten. After about two seconds, they realized that they were outnumbered, outclassed, and severely outgunned, so they lowered their weapons. "As to the Angels against ZAFT, yeah, that battle did happen. I watched it on C3 while it was happening. Rau Le Creuset, ZAFT's greatest ace at the end of the war, and a raving psychotic to boot. He tried maneuvering both sides into a nuclear war that would have killed everyone on both sides. He lost that gambit, but only after killing Angel One. Heavy Beam Rifle through the long axis of her Gundam. Angels, well over 300, Earth Alliance, a partial, ZAFT, one."

"Oh, so that did happen. Wow," the Mechanic says. "So, you going to line us up against a wall and hose us, or what?"

"I choose 'or what'," the Marine says.

"Huh?"

The Marine sets his shield down and unlatches it. Reggie could identify four different rifle or machine gun weapons depending from the rear of the shoulder plates, some kind of energy weapon hanging off his right upper arm, a pair of shotguns built into the forearms of his armor, a short-barrel cannon over the right shoulder, and another energy weapon over the left shoulder. Just for kicks, the Marine also had a pistol on his right thigh, a pack of missile launchers attached to the outside of each calf, with five silos per pack, and a pair of beam sabers on his left upper arm. The shield itself was over a meter tall, closer to a meter and a half, a shade more than a meter wide, and curved; if anything, it looked almost exactly like the shields of the Roman Legion of many centuries past, only modern and completely metal. The decorations on his were rather plain, compared to the others in his unit; he had only the Mendel symbol of the three stacked triangles over the picture of their colony, with what looked like gold leaf around that symbol. He now understood really why these crazies gave the Infantry such jitters, as the armor looked like it was heavier and more durable than that of the Linear Artillery vehicle, which was a rail gun on wheels, not a pissed-off-looking Marine. And somehow, the styling of the armor just made it look plain frightening.

What the Marine did, however, was just plain strange. He squatted down in front of the three, being backlit by where the windows in the shop would have been. That got Reggie thinking that their armor was even more advanced than most believed, if they could move and balance just like a normal human could. That more than else was a bit frightening to him, since in theory one of these troopers could jump or climb up a Mobile Suit and rip into it with its weapons at point-blank range.

"Your question was predicated on a belief, an errant one. We're not here to kill everyone our sights cross. Never have been, never will be here for that purpose. We're here to stop your dumbass brass from killing off the population of the world, which for better or worse includes us as well as them and the Coordinators. I hate to say it, kiddies, but you got fucked harder by your own command structure than we ever did. Our commander tried long and hard to placate the Earth Alliance big-wigs, but they just would not see the light of reason. So we show them the light; the light our Particle Cannons up their ass. You have my apologies for it coming to this, but duty is duty is duty, and Magi never shrink from their duties."

Reggie gets a rather irreverent thought: "One question, big guy."

"Hit me," the Marine replies automatically.

"How the hell did you sneak up on us wearing all that shit?"

"Huh. Strange question; I don't really know how our armor is silenced, though I know part of it is that the primary plates never touch unless you physically bang them together. The rest, you'd have to ask an Armor Tech about." He looks over to the others. "Any of you know?"

"Neg, Star Captain." "Nope." "No clue, boss." "Nada." "Not the foggiest."

"Can you stand, Pilot?"

"Not on this." Reggie indicates the shard of steel in his right leg. Blood had already soaked through both sides of the tourniquet he had applied to it with the Mechanic's help.

"Egh, that's a pretty bad one. I'll see where the nearest Medic is; use this on it." he reaches around his back and pulls off his storage container one-handed. When he sets it down and thumbs an access code, it opens up. What he pulled out looked nothing more than a hockey puck with a red button on it. "It's a nanotech wound sealant cartridge. Just set it on the wound and press the button, then don't move it for a minute."

Reggie accepts it in sort of a daze, since the blood loss was beginning to take a toll; he figured if it was some kind of explosive, he'd die pretty fast, or if it was whatever bullshit he said it was, it might help. He sets it on top of the tourniquet and presses the button.

Nothing happened for ten seconds as they looked on. "Is it busted?" The Mechanic asks.

"Give it a little. Nanos aren't the fastest devices in existence." Just after he finished, the sides of the cartridge seemed to get four holes in them, as something that looked like nothing but slow-moving water started flowing out of the cartridge, soaking through the tourniquet and down the sides of his thigh. Strangely enough, the blood-soaked tourniquet seemed to disappear as the stuff flowed over it, as well as the other blood components that it came with, until it started appearing as if it was drying up as well as his leg being partially sealed wit something that looked almost like a plaid thatch over where the steel shard was embedded in his leg, except the pattern was in hexes instead of squares. "Well, kid, your wound is sealed, now all we need to do is get you to a surgeon. Wonder where the nearest MASH (3) unit is..."

"Three blocks north of here, boss man." One of the Marines notes. "Only problem is, between us and there is a known enemy infantry strongpoint."

"Well, not any more, Slick's Star is headed in right now." As if on cue, to the north gunfire had just picked up dramatically. Whoever was fighting was not playing nice, that much was for sure. It lasted for about two minutes, then died down audibly. "Slick's Star is inside. Looks like once they lost the advantage of a building to themselves, they tossed in the towel. Willi, your team, prep these three to move. We'll take them up to the MASH on 33rd and sort them in there." One of them pulled out a telescoping stretcher and extended it. They knew what was coming; they would become prisoners of the Mendel forces, for whatever it was worth. They had heard rumors, but not one of them would hazard a guess as to what that really entailed.

For now, they all knew that Chicago was lost to the Earth Alliance, for now if not forevermore. The sight of civilians cheering on the Mendel troops as much as they were being jeered and derided made them all question what would happen in the coming weeks.

* * *

Author's Chapter Afterword:

Welcome to the Mendel and Magi equivalent to MSV. Har. Har. Har.

This first chapter was just a taste of what is to come, a different look at the initial fracas in Chicago. Next to come will be the real heavy hitting forces as the two sides bring in their reserves and reinforce. Mendel is just getting warmed up, however, as air flights into and out of O'Hare become almost exclusively military. And the Operation Plan calls for a lot more forces to be dropped into Chicago for the coming operations.

The Earth Alliance got it right and wrong, they would need more forces to take the Atlantic Coast and Iceland. How they got it wrong, however, is that Mendel's intention is to land them in Chicago and march them overland to Washington, not try a suicidal drop operation on the Earth Alliance capital. By marching them overland, the force commander can pick the vector by which he blitzes the enemy forces instead of hoping he can land enough close to Washington to do some serious damage. This also gives him the advantage of having his forces in a cohesive formation right from the word 'go', without having to try and assemble clusters that are spread from hell to breakfast while under enemy fire. That is something that ZAFT got right and wrong at the same time when deploying their forces by atmospheric drop, since they had a lot of shock value in assault timing but very little unit cohesion when they landed. At an estimate, such tactics degraded their unit effectiveness by about 20 percent in my opinion, and in major battles twenty percent is enough of a margin that you can lose a battle in such conditions, unless you plan ahead for that loss of effectiveness.

A side of the Mobile Forces less seen: the medium and heavy forces, namely in Battlemechs. Where the Assault Mech is king of the battlefield, under the right circumstances the medium and heavy units can be just as effective. This becomes drastically obvious in the confines of a city, as demonstrated by the Hunchback v Reggie, and the Centurion / Axman combo against the Windam. Fire and maneuver are hard to achieve at a steady pace in urban confines, all the more so when fighting a significantly larger force; doing so requires expert quarterbacking, elite tactics, precision fire, and veteran troops that don't spook from seeing their own shadow or when charging down a wall of enemies. In this case, such dodging and weaving, combined with precision shooting, scared the hell out of the enemy Mobile Suit forces, and essentially caused the remnant half of the Regiment to rout and flee the area, simply because they could not match the tactics of the Mendel forces and figured (not incorrectly) that they were facing veteran shocktroopers trained for this kind of warfare. Think of it as the Jet Stream Attack of old, performed by Battlemechs inside the confines of a city.

The super-heavy vehicles seen coming off the Dropship, as well as some units that were not illustrated yet, happen to be one of my favorite affectations of the Battletech Level 3 rules. Designing good, effective Super-heavies is difficult, especially when you want to make them practical (Ergo, no cost over 50,000,000 c-bills each) as well as combat effective. Given that I have designed effective units with the armor equivalent to two heavy 'mechs and a cost less than one assault omnimech, this could get very interesting when the Guardian, Drilewagen, Adamantoise, or Monarch go at it in upcoming chapters. The only thing that is hard to do right on a ground vehicle is energy weapons, due to Battletech rules pertaining to vehicles and energy weapon heat.

Also expect to see some classic Battletech vehicular whoopass rebuilt in Magi form, as all your old favorites like the Schreck and Alacorn, or the Fulcrum and Condor come back to haunt the Earth Alliance with advanced Clan weapons and Magi ingenuity. And, expect to see Omnivehicles, the ground-pounding equivalent to the Omnimech, which can have their weapons config rebuilt by a competent mechanic in less than five minutes. Also, in upcoming chapters you will see the support vehicles and forces at work as well, since combat is the last 10 percent of an army's effort in operating.

Note that the next several chapters are the same battle in each case, called the Mid-Day Mash by Mendel, because for some ungodly dumb reason the Earth Alliance started it at noon two days after Mendel landed. The difference between the chapters will be that each focuses on a different segement of Mendel's assets and a different segment of the battlefield Chicago. It will be a chaotic, frenetic, destructive battle where time-tested tactics and new technology on both sides are tested to the breaking point, as Chicago becomes the bloodiest battlefield the world over.

Next up: The Mid-Day Mash, as seen through the eyes of the Mendel Infantry.

* * *

Footnotes

(1): ACR is an Armored Cavalry Regiment. Usually an ACR has between 1000 and 2000 personnel, a normal ACR has everything a growing Army needs to take land, but is traditionally short on the assets to hold it. ACR is typically heavy on armor assets, lighter on Infantry, and normally has attached or organic artillery and ELINT (electronic intelligence) forces.

(2): a Corpsman is a Navy or Marine medic, basically. In Mendel, they are often called MedTechs as well as any other title they may have.

(X Ref): You saw part of this in the Flight of the Jokers Wild chapter 11.

* * *

Murphy's Laws applicable to this section:

(EA): The enemy invariably attacks on two occasions:  
when they're ready.  
when you're not.

(EA): Never forget that your weapon was made by the lowest bidder.

(Mendel): There is no such thing as a fair fight -- only ones where you win or lose


	2. Operation Ground And Pound

(02: Operation Ground And Pound)

(Time Ref: Day two of Chicago Siege, 1030 hours)

When in a war, the absence of battle is something to worry about. The absence of supplies, more so.

If anything, the local media's one great complaint was how Mendel dealt with those persons dumb enough to commit crimes in the Chicago held zone. Well, above and beyond the complaint that they were now forcibly in Mendel ward, and could not bash Mendel mindlessly. The press actually had to report now, not decide for the civilians in the area what said civilians opinions should be. Or, more appropriately, they were now doing what the press _should_ do: report.

Intel reports were still coming on-line, mainly from the _Nirvana Celeste_ that was parked over the North America theater with its cameras and guns pointed planetside, though some reports were coming from other, far more shady assets that gave more detailed reports. There was a shitload of Earth Alliance forces, something approaching two divisions and still growing, just brewing outside Mendel's artillery range and in areas that _Nirvana Celeste_ could not shoot them for fear of collateral damage, something the big guns on that platform could do easily. The catch was, left to themselves, they would eventually come in force for Chicago, meaning that the sheer weight of them would make the battle all that much more difficult. Not impossible, not by a long shot, but difficult.

Gina, Point Commander, 3rd point, 2nd star, 1st Trinary of the 4st Mendel Marine Cluster, figured that the six Brigades of enemy forces coming their way would have a little pang of fear in their hearts when thinking about having to come north and crush the Mendel forces. Surely they had heard stories of how the 24th Technical had been chewed up and shit out in pieces literally three hours after the forces had landed. A whole regiment broken, decimated four times over and sent packing. And the absolutely sad thing about that action had been the assaulting force was 2nd and 5th Trinaries of Alpha Cluster, 4th Mendel Mechanized Galaxy. Thirty Battlemechs and Omnimechs had sent five times their number to hell or packing westward for safety. The 24th Technical was supposed to be a veteran formation that know how to do the job first time, so why had they been so easily kicked out of the Chicago Metro area?

The answer to that was evident anywhere Gina looked on the streets of Naperville, a suburb of Chicago. These were not tangos to be feared, except in numbers; they were not soldiers, they were terrorists and thugs, two things Magi forces disdained institutionally. Those few soldiers among their ranks followed proper military decorum and tactics, doing their soldier's jobs when ordered. The rest, the bulk of their ranks actually, were nothing more than criminals and all accounts that Gina had heard over the past 36 hours were plenty of reinforcement to them. A good percentage of the Earth Alliance ranks were Blue Cosmos personnel, as well as these shadow assholes LOGOS that seemed to be stage-managing the whole affair rather poorly, and a good chunk (almost a third from accounts on the street) were aspiring Blue Cosmos terrorists. "That makes target recognition all that much easier, as well as the rules of engagement," her Star Colonel had ordered in this morning's briefing.

"Unless they are clearly surrendering, shoot them and file the paperwork," had been his clarification on proper methods of handling the enemy. That suited Gina all the better, since she had precisely zero love for the Blue Cosmos terrorists. She had been at a friend's house when her home was assaulted and her parents killed. She got to watch from a second story window as the Blue Cosmos assholes had pulled her parents out onto their front lawn, crying and screaming for mercy, and she watched as they were 'hosed down' right on the front lawn of their house...simply for being Coordinators. That night, she had hopped a bus headed for the airport, and a flight to Aube where she hitched a ride on a Cargo Dropship headed to Mendel. She didn't agree with everything that Mendel believed and allowed, but by the same token she did not agree with the inherent racism and arrogance of ZAFT, and that choice left her to sign up for the Armored Marines of Mendel. She actually wanted to be a Mobile Suit pilot, but she could not test high enough in the critical areas to pass the demanding Defensive Armor requirements, so she settled for Marine on the advice of the recruiter she had spoken to.

She got lucky, actually, as there was an armor set available from the battle that had sent the_Mjolnr_ unto this dimension, the trooper killed by a headshot from a Beam Cannon, and the armor almost exactly matched her physical dimensions. Mendel had a finite amount of the Infantry Armor – Marine Revision 5 sets, a fact that was impossible to conceal since Mendel's open-door policy made it possible for anyone to really get a good look as to what Mendel's vaunted Nanotech Industry was producing. The reciprocation to that was simple: if you can't produce your best available equipment, then produce what you have the technology to produce in a crapload quantity, throwing both quantity and quality at the enemy. This philosophy came of force since Magi do not believe in using Unarmored Infantry, since unarmored infantry are too easily killed in battle and with enough industry backing you, amassing an army of Armored Infantry is a simple technical exercise.

The compromise between what could be produced and what Mendel had as best in its arsenal was a significant step backwards, but still something so alien to the Earth Alliance as to constitute a luncheon flight to Saturn with some aliens. The technology in question was called Battle Armor, a full-coverage and environmentally-sealed exoskeleton suit that gave a trooper immense amounts of protection as well as the ability to carry weapons capable of damaging or in the right circumstances destroying a Battlemech. The first users of Battle Armor was the Clans, namely Clan Wolf, though in where the Magi hail, when the Clan Battle Armor went head to head with the Magi Armored Infantry of that time, the winner was the Magi by a slim margin. It was not for a good while after that first encounter that the Magi Armored Infantry came to be the serious threat they were, namely in certain technological advances that allowed one Armored infantryman to pose a serious threat to a Battlemech. Still, even with the advance of the Magi Infantry Armor system and its subsequent copying by the five other Star Empires, the Battle Armor systems did not die out, since they were both easier to produce and beat the hell out of exposed troops on the ground. Also, some capabilities exist among Battle Armor that could not be easily mirrored by the Armored Infantry, making them useful specialists as often as not doing their jobs while being guarded by the Armored Infantry. And lastly, their ease of manufacture made them a smashing hit with Magi militia forces, who could build, maintain, and use as many as twenty of the higher-cost Battle Armor for the price and maintenance requirements of one Armored Infantry suit; the flip side is they got what they paid for, since one Armored Infantry suit, competently piloted, could take out the twenty Battle Armor troopers.

The Battle Armor were issued to Mendel's Military Reserve and the Active Infantry forces. When 'The Nuke Strike' happened, the Military Reserve sprang into action, preparing their units to take to the field and crush the maggots. They first saw action in Telomeres, where the Battle Armor forces proved way the hell too much for the enemy infantry to deal with inside the base. They even had one confirmed kill against a_Drake_-class Warship that had tried to fight from its moorings against two stars of Bearplug Assault Armor. The distance between where the armor was standing to the bridge had been about 150 meters, a hard but not impossible shot for the Armored Troopers, and the distance between the forward gun and the troopers had been about fifty meters. That gun had raked the troops twice, hitting two different troopers, but the advanced armor composite had held even against the equivalent to a successor-state AC/20. A volley of Advanced SRM missiles to the gun turret silenced that weapon, and a volley of Bearhunter Superheavy Autocannon, each shot causing more damage than one of the SRMs, had annihilated the ship's bridge. Oops, sorry Charlie, your ship just got sunk by _infantry_. When asked after Telomeres was settled, the captured Earth Alliance Personnel, now bondsmen and to the Mendel Armed Forces, claimed that the one thing that caused most of them to surrender was Mendel's collection of Infantry forces that had no equivalent among the Earth Alliance. They would have much rather preferred surrender over death; not all got the chance to surrender, however.

Gina and her point were headed southbound down the sidewalk, on the far side a point of the Minutemen armor were headed north. Minutemen was a common design used for local militia defense by the Magi, preferred as it could be easily used in conjunction with standard Battlemechs and Vehicles, neither of which are equipped to transport Battle Armor as mechanized forces. The Minuteman had special magnetic clamps that it could use to attach to the hull of a tank or 'mech and hitch a ride to wherever said vehicle was going, increasing their mobility and service life dramatically. The arsenal of said units was rather simple, a hard-mounted Support PPC was their main weapon, with a single-shot SRM-2 mounted over the shoulders ala Clan Elemental of days past, and a hard-mount for the trooper's preference of anti-infantry weapons mounted underslung on the left forearm of the suit, and battle claws on both hands with integrated magnets that made it very difficult to remove the unit when it was swarming a enemy 'mech or vehicle (1). With jump capability and its collection of systems of both Clan and Inner Sphere descent, the Minuteman was definitely a unit to pay attention to in close quarters, since it had plenty of fang in the typical confines of a city.

The looks she got from the people on the street today were less hostile than yesterday. Part of this could be explained by the simple fact that the dissenters had packed up and left. Mendel was not refusing exodus to anyone that wanted to leave, on the contrary, the faster they left, the better. Others had left out of fear of the coming battle, and still more hand left because of unjustified fear caused by hate propaganda spread by Blue Cosmos. Except, the places to run now were dwindling, since Equatorial, United States of South America, Scandanavia, Aube, and ZAFT were all refusing entry to Earth Alliance citizens courtesy of the ongoing hostilities. Therefore, in a fashion most Earth Alliance citizens, regardless of bent, were now trapped within the Earth Alliance with their backs to a wall of Mendel soldiers who were not pleased at all about having their homes destroyed in nuclear blasts and 40,000+ citizens killed without due cause.

Most of what she had seen since her patrol began at 0800 was level. Not civil, per se, but not hostile, either. It was good for an audible sigh as she stopped on a street corner and looked in each direction. Day Zero – D-Day in other words – of the invasion had been hectic as the pithy Earth Alliance strikes to try to immediately dislodge the Mendel invasion force had to be repulsed, which had immediately put her in the field mere hours after the Dropships had touched deck. Day One, the first full day of the occupation of Chicago, had been quiet from an Infantry standpoint – all the action was in the air and in Anti-Air operations where ground forces had been shooting down cruise missile waves headed into the city. Today – Day Two – was shaping up to be another Day One, _so long as those Earth Alliance asshats hold their wad_,Gina thinks aloud

"Something up, Commander?" her point second asks. Jill was another almost exactly like her, a Coordinator that had lost it all to the Blue Cosmos.

"Just...remembering what I've lost."

"At least you're alive to remember," Jill notes. "And you can do something about it." The amused snort from Gina led to the inevitable: "And that is about what?"

"You, or what you just said."

"Huh? I don't get it."

"Later. No big deal." Gina begins the trek down the next street, toward a row of open-air businesses that she liked window-shopping. She hadn't decided if she had the courage to actually shop there yet, which would be done off-duty of course, mainly because some of the retailers gave her the evil eye without anything resembling reserve. On the other hand, Some of them were very welcoming of the Mendel personnel, more than willing to run business transactions in the almighty C-bill, which soon enough would be the currency de rigeur of the Earth Alliance and sometime in the future would likely be the benchmark of economic and political stability in the Earth Sphere.

**CRASH**. What hit the ground and immediately drew Gina's attention to the scene was glass, and had some kind of liquid. Gina did not have a chance to look at her Enhanced Sensors report as to what it was, though, since a kid had just ran out of the store that it was in. He made the mistake of running the two meters right into Gina's armored form and bounced off it, landing on his arse. He looked up to the offending object he just it, and instantly recognized it as Armored Infantry. "Oh, sh—"

"Don't bother running, kid. My jump jets are faster than your legs."

"Oh, shit, Isurrenderdon'tkillme!" he says in such a rush that it took Gina a few moments to understand what had been said. This was accompanied by him going to both knees and holding his hands up similar to a Christian prayer service.

"I don't shoot common criminals. Just the exceptional ones," the humor of the old Magi joke was rather lost on the kid. "What's your name, kid?" Gina asks, though in reality she had to admit that she may be no more than three or four years older than him.

"Mark," he says, though his voice was still shaking from the fear inherent to the encounter.

"You, retailer, this yours?" Gina asks and waves the gold chain toward the older man.

"Yes, it is. Thank you, Marine." he reclaims it gingerly, turning it over for inspection. "Well, it appears undamaged. God-damned brat," he says while looking at the kid who was at the feet of the Marine.

"You want to claim him for, say, ten hours term of bond for botched shoplifting?" Gina offers.

"No, I don't believe in that crap," he says rather harshly. "I got the item back and he got the shit scared out of him. I'll call it even so long as he never comes into my store again."

"Works for me, thank you, sir," Gina notes, then looks down. "Stand up and eyes forward, kid." Mark complies, though he was still a bit rattled from having come this close to a Marine. "Talk to me, kid."

"I—well, what should I say?" he asks defensively.

"First off, why are you shoplifting? It ain't going to be long before these merchants realize that Mendel policies on criminals means you'll be working for one of them to repay what you ran off with."

"I—my family is dead! I gotta make a living somehow!"

"A living, is it?" Gina sounded rather amused by his logic. "You're over 14, right?"

"Well, yes..."

"Two blocks north of here is a police station. Step in and ask a Marine for a ride down to the airport. When you get there, just ask someone in HR for a job. Tell them Point Commander Gina sent you, that will get them moving. You'll have a job and quarters before nightfall. And if I catch you stealing again, you'll be doing fifty hours scrubbing airport toilets for it, clear?"

"Clear, ma'am!"

"Move out, kid. And keep in mind that while I will be walking that way, though my sensors _will_ be watching you."

"Yes, ma'am." He moves around the other four Infantry and keeps going in the ordered direction.

"That worked well," David notes. He was the one guy in the unit, as well as the Armor Sniper for their whole Star. He was an old hand, born and raised on an obscure backwater planet of the Multimage Empire where he literally had to go shoot dinner every few nights to get fed. When he turned twelve, he hitched a ride on the first Dropship for anywhere and never looked back, which inevitably led him to here.

"Simple solution to a simple problem. C'mon, let's move."

-x-x-x-

(Unit: 10th Grenadier Company, 8th Brigade Earth Alliance Ground Forces)

(Time: Day 2, 1045 hours)

"Yo, Neil, looks like we're getting ready to move somewhere again."

"Where to this time? They want us over alongside the 4th Brigade's Armor Column?"

"Hell no, looks like we're getting ready to head in, kick those coordinator-loving assholes off this planet!"

"God, only you and the Brass could find this exciting." Neil picks up his Recoilless Rifle, a large anti-tank rocket launcher basically, and sets it against the tree he was resting against. He then hauls up his backpack and puts it on, and lastly his helmet. Neil was one big dude, a weightlifter among weightlifters, and he could easily carry the Recoilless Rifle and four rockets, while Biggs (his 'loader') carried about a dozen more reloads as well as their 'antipersonnel' weapon, a standard-issue assault rifle and four magazines. The RR tube weighed about fifty pounds and was technically something that two persons were supposed to carry, but most the Grenadiers bucked that rule, instead they were able to carry more tubes and ammo if they used a two-man team instead of three as the regulations said.

Of course, everyone in the 10th knew that you did not stop a Mendel Armored Marine with an assault rifle, that just pissed them off. The Grenadiers had come of existence for just this purpose, to bring heavy anti-armor firepower onto the enemy infantry, which made about as much sense as screwing for virginity...until you actually saw Mendel's definition of 'infantry.' A detachment of Armored Marines and Mendel Mobile Forces had been assigned to the Megafloat Linear Catapult, the mobile Linear Catapult that was neutral territory, as mercenaries hired to ensure its neutrality. The Earth Alliance had collected good recon photos of those Marines and Mobile Army units had, and the conclusion was that one of those Marines had the defensive power to withstand a beating from the Earth Alliance Linear Tank, which made them exceptionally hard to kill since ZAFT Mobile Suits could not take more than a few hits from the Linear Tank before going tits-up. Infantry that could take the beating a tank could not..._either Mendel, or whoever the hell their parent organization was, must be doing something right or the Earth Alliance is doing something wrong_, Neil figured. Unlike the Blue Cosmos saps in the 1st Corps, Atlantic Federation (The Pure World Corps, as some called it), Neil knew that superior numbers was not going to impress Mendel, and they had already had two days to reinforce their positions and fort in, making them incredibly dangerous.

"C'mon, our squad is mounting up now, man."

Neil hefts his Recoilless Rifle, sighs, and trudges for the 5-ton truck that he was going to ride into the battle. The rest of his squad was in the truck already, and most had neutral expressions. Only those three that had been in the military during the last war knew what they were really going to have to face ahead, the rest were virgins, untouched by war. That meant, in Neal's inestimable opinion, half the squad might as well not be here, especially given who they were going to face. By all accounts, the Multimages were truly masters of infantry warfare, above and beyond any other mastery they may have. The only thing the Earth Alliance really had going for them was that, by all accounts, the Mendel forces did not have the pinnacle of Multimage combat capabilities at hand, namely the Mages that had almost no technological equal in Existence. If one wanted to call that a blessing, per se, since that meant they would make up the shortfall in ways less assured to kill someone than just wound them.

"Ready for it, Biggs?" Jim asks. He was a new hand, and pretty good with the automatic grenade launcher when you got down to it. All that remained was to see how well he did with the enemy taking real shots at him, Neil figured.

"Oh hell yeah I'm ready to kick these assholes off planet."

"Fuck yeah!" more than one of the persons in the truck says.

"Listen to me, all of you," Staff Sergeant Willie says. "These guys may be Coordinators. They may be Naturals. Either way, they ain't normal infantry. We train for this, but we have never faced them in battle before, except in Telomeres, and we lost royally there. Nobody escaped to tell us how well our weapons did against them; I heard from the grapevine they even used some of their 'lower-tech armor' to take down a whole Warship, a _Drake_-class, even as it shot the unit up with its main gun. These guys are serious players. When you see them, hammer them until they fall over dead. Don't stop shooting until you are dead or they are dead, clear?"

"Finally, some wisdom in our ranks," Neal says. Being a Corporal (and having been busted down from Sergeant three times for insubordination), the Staff Sergeant basically treated him as the Squad Second, despite being a rank below the official Squad Second.

"Tell these kids what it was like going head-to-head with the ZAFT infantry out in Africa, Neil," The Sergeant directs.

"Well, there I was..." His narrative lasted about five minutes, and ended with the obligatory 'No shit', which made the story neither true nor false (as in at least part of it being classified). It covered all the basics, how to move, cover your allies, shoot until they dead or running, and mostly to hope that they (the enemy) run out of ammo first.

"And why did we listen to that? Fighting these guys isn't going to be like anything else," one of the greenhorns notes.

"Because it's got three important lessons in it: one, always cover your buddy, you may need covering later, two, never get into a firefight without more ammo than the other guy, and three, never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself." The last had brought out the inevitable chuckles from the all-guy squad.

"You know, I keep hearing that a lot of Mendel's military is chicks. How the hell does that work?"

"TraDoc," the Sergeant replies, meaning Training (Tra) and Doctrine (Doc). Basically, he meant that their training and doctrinal system allowed for a wider variance in aptitudes, which meant that just about anyone could serve in their armed forces, because they all trained up to a level standard over time for their chosen specialty, which took longer in training. "Mendel doesn't really divide it's people by gender as the rest of Existence does. Something about Magi custom. And their armor allows a person, male, female, doesn't matter, to do some insanely powerful things."

"That doesn't happen here," Biggs notes.

"Keep telling yourself that, kid," Neil says. "And that's another thing that Mendel has going for them, because they think of themselves as real Mendel citizens instead of the partially degraded ladies of the Earth Alliance, the girls you face on the other side of the battlefield are going to be even more ruthless than the guys, likely. They'll feel they have more to lose than anyone else on the field, and they'll give us hell for it."

"I'll bet a few of them have quite a bit to lose, heh heh," one of the known perverts in his squad notes aloud.

"Didn't I hear right about Mendel having some kind of mind-readers?" Ty asks. Like Neil, Ty was a veteran of wars past and quite grizzled for it. Likely, he was using that to scare the thought of rape out of the greenhorns.

"Yeah, and I hear all of them are girls as well," the same pervert notes. "I think it'd be interesting to see what makes them so 'special,' y'know?"

"Well, I think we just found the unit's walking dead man," Neil says.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"They capture you and you try doing even a quarter of what runs around in your brain, we get to see what the term 'field execution' means to Mendel."

"They won't do that shit. Not if they want to hold credibility with Aube or Scandanavia." Said with all the assuredness of a middle-ages peasant. He KNEW what was true and false, researchers, scientists and kings be damned.

"They don't give a shit what the rest of the world thinks any more, and that includes their neighbors in ZAFT. They are playing this game by their rules and to hell with what everyone else thinks," Neil says morosely. "And that makes them the most dangerous of all, because nobody can pressure them to stop until they are damn well good and ready."

-x-x-x-

"Well, here they come," Jill notes acidly. "All 35,000 of the assholes."

"Relax, girl, we've been there, done that in the sims more than once." They had also 'been there done that' with larger force estimates, all the way up to and including the theoretical maximum Earth Alliance force structure against Chicago, and the record for such field simulations was about fifty-fifty, with a slightly higher lean toward the Mendel forces winning. It was a combination of superior weapons technology and tactics refined over 3500 years of very brutal back-and-forth warfare that won over the Earth Alliance numbers. It did not always work, even in sim, but even if they lost Mendel had a bad habit of chewing up most of the Earth Alliance forces, which made for a helluva negotiating position after a theoretical cease-fire was declared.

And so far it appeared they were making the classic mistakes that Magi forces love to rely on to win, packing their forces into a high density made them all that much easier to kill in quantity, as the_Nirvana Celeste_ was busy proving right now. The streaks of Naval PPCs and Naval Lasers coming down through the atmosphere, with accompanying rumbling from the kinetic force blasts delivered by those weapons made the whole affair seem like a turkey shoot, yet the enemy could calve a significant chunk of their forces and still win in Chicago using what suborbital bombardment did not finish off.

Overhead, Mendel's helicopter forces roared toward the enemy, tasked to lead off the combat action and sting their forward elements at range, drawing them into prepared assault zones where civilian casualties would be minimized and artillery strikes were pre-plotted. One of these assault zones was along the 57 highway, in the area of Oak Forest. There were some large expanses of relatively flat and forested territory that looked real inviting until you got comfortable there...and then the artillery began in on your arse in earnest.

The enemy operation plan was dead simple in theory, Gina knew. They were going to present three attack vectors to the Mendel forces, two from the southwest and one from just north of west, along with varied strikes coming in from just about every other direction. Being in Naperville, Gina and her area forces were basically between two of the attack vectors, though closer to the northern most of the attacks coming from the southwest, being centered on the 55 Expressway headed right into the heart of Chicago. That meant that she could be engaged from either side, but would likely have to face the left flank of the enemy headed up the 55.

"Clear the streets, people! This area is about to become a battlefield! Everyone indoors!" Some just looked at her like Gina was fucking nuts, but others did as ordered. Less than ten seconds later the air raid sirens began their warble, which made the fact that she wasn't nuts infinitely clear.

The affair was accentuated by the heavies going overhead, the Fireball Aerofighters that had been stationed at O'Hare as their takeoff and landing zone. Each of them was moving slow, carrying a large bomb and missile load that would certainly bring upon the enemy massive amounts of casualties. Interspersed with the Empire's main strike fighter was the smaller ones, mainly Clan Omnifighters like Sabutai and Kirghiz, loaded heavy as well for anti-ground operations. And one new model that had a silhouette similar to something that Gina had seen in videos before, but she could not remember where from. She could tell that it was carrying a variant of the Launcher Strike pack, similar to those used by the artillery configuration of the Strike Gundam. The one difference Gina could see from the original, though, is that it had two smaller cannons instead of the one larger cannon, and she could not offhand remember the name of the cannon. It was powerful, and supposedly Magi Warship armor wasn't all that effective against it. Not that one Strike Gundam ran anything close to a chance of taking down something like the _Mjolnr_, but it could cause damage to said ship.

"Check it out, they've sortied the whole bloody aerospace force to help us out," Adel notes with no shortage of awe as she reviewed the force deployments on C3I interlink. Adel was actually an immigrant twice over, as she was not born in the Multimage Empire, she was initially of the Dark Moon Empire, born on a planet that by treaty was held by the Dark Moon and the Magi. Her family crossed the border illegally, requested asylum from persecution, and was granted it by a Mage Star Colonel. Since that day, she had always aspired to be a Mage Officer, one who had the power to help those in need, but she had found out early on that such power rested at all levels of the Armed Forces. And to her, what they were doing in Chicago was just another way to help people. To that end, Adel was equipped more defensive than the norm, with a shield-pilebunker combination on her right forearm, an ultra-heavy shield with reactive plates on her left, a heavy capacitor to power her shell generator for quite a while, and even an AMS system on her right shoulder. She had no shortage of offensive arms, no Armored Infantry officer did, though hers was about a four times greater active defense than normal.

"Armor forces moving up now, we should have Battlemech support here in the next ten minutes, heavy ground force support in twenty," Jill notes after Adel. Normally, Mobile Army units, such as heavy vehicles, 'Mechs, Mobile Suits, and Gundams typically remained with their transport unit or on a base, so as to not interfere with the civilians and their property. This had the downside, of course, that it typically took time for a mobile army unit to respond to hostile action, though for most purposes the Magi Infantry was enough.

This, however, was nowhere near something the Infantry could handle on their own, though. What was coming up the 55 was the 9th Shock Brigade, a force of well over 5000 men and mobile suits that would make a very powerful contender for largest maneuver formation on planet. Not even a Mage Galaxy was that large in personnel or area coverage, but by the same token that large a force was not something as flexible as a Galaxy of Mendel forces. With that kind of numbers, the enemy tactic was dead simple to figure out: they intended on steamrolling the whole Mendel force on ground, trading lives lost for land gained in what was just another calculation to the Earth Alliance brass.

"The only problem with that calculation is, such tactics almost never worked for the Negaverse, what the hell makes them think they will work for the Earth Alliance?" Gina asks more to herself than else, though it was put out on the Point frequency.

"It is just a calculation, what forces they _think_ they will need to dislodge us from the planet. Of course it will not work, they do not understand that the Mage is best on the defense." Dale's reference was to the forces of the Magi, not necessarily a Mage (of which Mendel had none or one, depending on what rumors you believed). The Magi Touman had won more battles by waiting for an enemy to do something stupid in an assault action than they had won by assaulting the enemy outright themselves. The one blaring exception to that rule of thumb was a campaign called Moonlight Thunderbolt (2), which had happened on the expert quarterbacking of one who could see the future without error. Classic Magi dictum: in general, if an enemy is going to step on their own crank, it will usually happen when they are trying to attack you instead of defending from an attack by you.

"Look at the enemy frontline," Victoria notes before their discussion degenerated into a philosophical debate over offense versus defense. "They got a whole Regiment of armor up forward and headed right at Plainfield."

"You think they are going to follow the 55 into the heart of town?" Gina asked Victoria, who seemed to be the best in the unit at prognostication over the enemy's actions.

"Their command elements can't be that stupid, it is not humanly possible. They follow the 55 for that long, our air forces and naval support will have their asses for lunch and shit out a brick with their names on it."

"And have the reinforcements for dinner," Dale amplifies Victoria's estimate of the results pertaining to that action. "For damn sure they know we have eyes on all the major roads, and while they can make great time by using them, that makes their travel routes predictable _and_ leaves them with damn near no cover to use to shield from artillery, air or naval support. Not to mention land mines." Gina had her opinion about the use of land mines, though in the end she had to admit that opinion was based on political correctness conditioning and not battlefield reality (3). The easiest way to force an issue was to deny the enemy the right to move through certain areas, and using land mines of one type or another was a good way to accomplish that. If the enemy wanted to move through a mined area, they either had to use support personnel to clear the mines, which ate valuable time, use artillery to clear the mines (which denied the artillery to more pressing fronts), or just drive their forces over the mines, something no sane commander would allow to happen.

The war drums truly began their melody in the skies, as enemy airwaves began in on the Mendel interceptor forces. From where Gina stood, she could see the battle up in the skies, mainly over Aurora and Batavia, as Mendel's Fireball Aerofighters, which were very surprisingly speedy for such a large craft, took on the enemy air forces. They were nowhere near as nimble as smaller craft, and even the F-7D Spearhead VTOL of the Earth Alliance had a lot more maneuvering capability than the Fireball. The catch was, the Spearhead had less than 5 percent the combat capability of the Fireball, as the hard-mount internal weapons load carried by the Fireball weighed over three times more than a fully-loaded Spearhead, and that was not even including external weapons stores. For getting up close and personal, Mendel had a rather significant array of smaller fighters, as well as smaller fighters and even some Land-Air 'Mechs brought in by the_Nirvana Celeste._

The nature of the battle in the skies changed as Gina clearly saw what had to be a blast of Agni headed from left to right, which meant it was fired from the Earth Alliance side toward Mendel fighters. "What the hell was that? I thought they couldn't afford to equip most of their units with mission packs," Victoria asks. Likely, the culprit would be a FX-550 Skygrasper equipped with a Launcher Strike Pack, meaning it had enough firepower to slag down a Fireball in one shot as that cannon was a threat to Warships and not just fighters.

"They don't need to equip them all, just a leavening of them to increase their flexibility and firepower," Dale notes. "I'll wager a paycheck the same goes for their ground forces: we'll see maybe ten percent of their Mobile Suits armed with some kind of firepower-boosting assault pack, the rest will have performance-boosting packs like Aile or Flight packs which cost a helluva lot less and make them harder to hit."

"Negaverse ever pull stunts like this?" Gina asks.

"Yeah, they loved using Leo Mobile Suits with the booster pack to get in real close and personal on our units, but it didn't always work if we could see them coming. Our snipers would pick them out of the sky in that case, and even we Armor Snipers could take a flying Leo down, since the pack has almost no armor value, it is just a shitload of jets and a fuel tank." Of course, Dale did not see conflicts in which he had done that, but he was well-versed in the actions of the Armor Snipers of yore. Knowing what had worked in the past was the first step to making things work in the here-and-now. And by all accounts the Armor Sniper of modern times and present location would get just as much a workout as they did back during the Star Empire Wars.

"Uh, guys, C3 is showing about a Brigade coming up our way centered on the 59, this could get messy," Adel notes.

"She's right. Can you wrap up the debate so we can get this war on?" Victoria asks Jill and Gina specifically, though her gaze also crossed Dale.

-x-x-x-

The 10th was not the lead element headed up the 59 Expressway toward Naperville, but they were fairly close to it. On-site intel painted a rather easy picture as to what was in Naperville right now, since it was a dense little city they did not have any 'mech forces in the town yet, though recon aircraft patrols were painting a bleak picture as to what was coming in to reinforce the scattered infantry in the area. Supposedly a whole Trinary of Battlemechs were moving up into the area, followed by heavy vehicles and possible reinforcements from up to another Trinary of Mobile Forces, namely three Strike-F Gundams leading twelve ZAKU units, ZAFT mass-production Mobile Suits that Mendel was contracting to purchase from ZAFT, ostensibly to send home with the _Mjolnr_. Nobody believed that any farther than they could throw a ZAKU, of course, the guise of preparing for a war at 'home' was convenient and effective for preparing to take this world over.

"All right, boys, this is where we go it on the ground," their Sergeant says after listening in on a radio conversation. "The Mobile Suits will support us on the assault, but we're going to have to go in, house-to-house if necessary, and clean the enemy out. We've all been through MOUT training, so keep your god-damned heads down and stay alive in here, clear?"

"Yes, sir!" Vic shouts. He was another of the unit's greenhorns, and Neil had odds on him being one of the first three to die. He was also an absolutely anal Blue Cosmos supporter, and was rumored to have raped and killed about a half-dozen Coordinator women before and even during his tenure in the Infantry. If he died, Neil would mourn the loss of the recoilless rifle he carried, certainly not the person carrying it.

"Move out!" The Sergeant leans up and picks up his Recoilless Rifle, as the unit begins filing out of the truck.

They were parked on the side of the road, as they and about a dozen other squads exited their trucks to march into Naperville proper. "Hey, where the hell are we?"

"The old 34, West Ogden Avenue is the street name." They were also strikingly close to North Mill Street, the truck was parked outside some large commercial structure belonging to D-Tec Corp., which Neal thought was a member company of LOGOS. It also showed classic signs of having been fought over rather brutally, as there was blood stains on some of the walls and blast marks where missiles had hit the structure. "Downtown Naperville is that way about 800 meters. Let's get to it."

"Uh, Sergeant, dumb question, how the hell did we get this close to Naperville without being shot at?" Neil asks.

"I'm not going to interrupt the enemy with a word of advice if they can't spare forces to try and sack us, y'dig?"

"Roger that," Neil replies.

As they began a trek down the grassy lawns and ancient sidewalks of Naperville, everyone in the unit was feeling ill at ease. Mendel damn well had to know they were there, they had satellite observation and coordination courtesy of their iron grip on near-space (for damn sure nobody had a weapon capable of challenging the _Mjolnr_ or_Nirvana Celeste_,and said warships could look down and see them walking down the street). So, the question running rampant through more than a few minds was: _where the hell are they_?

"Could they be a no-show?" Biggs asks.

"Not a chance in hell," Neil replies. "Stay close. If they going to show themselves, it is going to be big and loud, like all of them at once."

The street they were on had civilian subdivisions left and right, whole clusters of dense-packed houses on either side of the five-lane West Ogden road. Eyes flitted from one window to the next, making sure Mendel was not using the civilian houses as ambush locations, which in theory was a possibility but by their so-called codes of combat they would not do if it jeopardized civilian lives. The one great reassurance that Neil took was that the area between N. Eagle and N. Mill streets had houses with active civilian presence, likely the hard-asses that did not want to give up their houses regardless of how many soldiers of whatever side died on their front lawn.

The teams moved carefully, looking around from places of cover and concealment for any hint of enemy activity, and they found none. There were civilians here and there, those brave enough to even dare to look out windows at the passing soldiers, and that was it. In the distance they could see some of the businesses on the main drag of Naperville had occupants, probably staff or maybe a few very crazy customers, though most of those facilities were as empty as the otherwise bustling suburb appeared dead. Within ten minutes of darting from cover to cover, they had made it all the way to the center of Naperville, North Washington street.

Vic was the first to look around the corner of the tire store on the southwest corner of the intersection between Ogden and Washington, though his look only lasted a second. His body collapsed straight down, followed momentarily by the sound of a single rifle shot. "Goddamnit!" Biggs shouts. The wound had been rather unusual, as the slug that killed him did not tear a large chunk out of Vic's head but he was dead nonetheless as the round had passed through his brainstem in transit.

"Looks like I pegged that one right, Vic was the first of us to end up dead. Sarge, we got a sniper down Washington, at a guess he's about two hundred yards or so down the way."

"Roger that." The Sergeant puts out the info to the Mobile Suits that were assigned to this suburb. That was one thing the Earth Alliance had been taught the hard way by the enemy, rather than having a routing command structure where you ran commands up the ladder to the highest needed authority and then back down the chain of command that the action was needed from, there were 'cell commanders' that had authority over a given geographical area that passed orders out to the forces in their area of command, and requests like artillery service were handled by these commanders as well. The Magi and Mendel forces had a different way of doing things, every soldier was both a source and receptor of tactical intelligence and action requests, and Mendel forces were trained to look at the situation in their ZOC overall and act on the threat that would pose the greatest strategic problems for the evolving battle. Of course, their commanders had the authority to issue more detailed commands that superseded their kill zones, and they usually did if certain assets were needed more in other areas or if an excellent target of opportunity was available, but most the time Magi forces encountered in the field were under local (and incredibly competent) command, depending on the size of force encountered.

"Roger that, 10th Grenadiers, I'll smoke the little shit that's offing your personnel." The responding Mobile Suit was a Windam, the Earth Alliance latest mass-production model that was more than a match for some of the aged Mobile Suit units of the Mendel Defensive Armor forces, such as Dom, Taurus, Zaku, Leo, and even older local units like GINN, GuAIZ, and Strike Dagger. Except, compared to Mendel's ungodly-large collection of Gundams and Mobile Armors the Windam (and most of the rest of the Earth Alliance forces) was little more than target practice.

The said Mobile Suit walked out into the intersection, wisely with his shield set to the south to protect the body of the unit from any fire from that direction...except for one vital part of the Mobile Suit. It was as if they were watching some kind of bad horror flick, as the Mobile Suit that had entered the intersection had taken a hit to the head even as it was still walking. The exceptionally loud, flat crack of the enemy weapon belied that it was a big gun of some type, and the slug literally tore through the head by entering the right eye of the head and immediately spidering that eye, then careening out the back of the head with an exit wound almost three-quarters of a meter in size. It went without saying that the main camera of that suit was shot, though the suit was not crippled, of course, just close. As the machine changed its orientation so it could bring its chest-mounted optics to bear toward the south, it had to change the alignment of the shield to allow it to see in that direction. Again the loud crack, and this time Neil was looking at a different part of the Windam, the cockpit access in the torso of the machine, and he got to see the result as whatever was fired punched a hole in the cockpit door big enough that he could put his forearm through it. Without a doubt, the pilot had taken what was left of the penetrator dead in the chest, as well as having the whole of his body chopped to bits by the metal spall that was the door where the slug went through it, since a round like that would cause an inordinate amount of damage to the back-side of the cockpit access that would become pure shrapnel.

"That's a damned Armor Sniper," the Sergeant says as he pulls his radio out, just after the Windam in question fell to both knees and slumped forward with its arse cocked up in the air; definitely not a dignified way to die. "Mobile Forces in Naperville, fall back and maintain cover on your cockpits, we have an Armor Sniper in the area."

"Can you Infantry take him out?"

"He's using both an armor sniper rifle and an anti-personnel sniper rifle. Taking this guy out is going to be a bitch, plain and simple," the Sergeant replies.

"If you can localize him, call for artillery and just sit back. This battle is going to take days, no sense in wasting lives."

"Roger that, Captain."

"Leave it to one fucking enemy sniper to tie up a whole Brigade," Neil notes.

-x-x-x-

"Kickass op, Dale, you just cock-blocked their whole formation," Gina notes on open bands. Their Mobile Army units had fallen back with their shields obviously covering their cockpits, and were making sure they were out of sight of where Dale was hiding at.

"Guys, looks like their Infantry is staging to rush Washington Avenue. Everyone hold onto your asses, Dale shift your cover so you're out of sight."

"Roger that, Star Commander." Dale creeps back so that he was now interposing a bush as well as a flower garden between himself and the enemy's axis of advance. His rifle had been drawn back, as the muzzle brake of the monster MASR-23A2 was wider than a clenched fist and could be seen at as short a range as 300 meters by the naked eye.

"Let 'em come out to halfway across the road, people, then hose 'em."

"Roger that,"

"Hai," (4)

"Gotcha."

"Can do."

"Here they come," the first elements of the enemy forces had ducked around the corners of several buildings south of Ogden avenue on the Washington Avenue's west side. Mendel's Armored Infantry and Battle Armor were actually hiding in the trees and buildings east of Washington, out of sight of the enemy and relying on Enhanced Sensors and C3I relay to track the enemy progress. Present battle planning was to have the forces shoot clear through any light walls or barriers, since Enhanced Sensors and C3I basically negated cover and concealment; if one of the Infantry could see the enemy, everyone in the theater could see the enemy, basically. "Huh? Oh, shit, civilian vehicle from the south."

"Enemy appears to be conducting a traffic stop on it right now. Stand by," one of the forward Recon officers notes.

"All forces on this subnet, this is 1st Trinary Alpha Cluster of the 4th. We're two minutes out. Hold onto your asses."

"Oh, shit, Star Commander, enemy is trying to drag the civilians out of the vehicle now at gunpoint. Pirate my feed for updates," he relays on the C3 channel. "Oh, shit this may get bloody, he's demanding to know if they're coordinators or not—"

"Like hell I'm going to allow that shit," Dale says. "Permission to engage?"

The Star Commander had to make a snap judgment here, weighing their planned surprise assault against the lives of civilians. In the end it wasn't much of a contest, since waiting would still give them the same net result but with civilian deaths added. "Do 'em nasty," the Star Commander replies.

Dale springs up real fast, his MASR (Magi Armor Sniper Rifle) pointed skyward. "Oi, Commie bastards! Looking for me?"

"Oh, shit, there fuck is!" one of the enemy shouts as Dale begins bringing his ASR down onto target on the infantryman that was trying to harass and subdue the civilians. "Get—"

**CRACK**. The MASR-23A2 fired a classic 20mm APFSDS round (Armor-Piercing Fin-Stabilized Discarding Sabot). The penetrator itself was only 7mm wide (not counting fins), surrounded by 13mm of ABS plastic 'shoe' that helped guide the slug down the barrel and separated from the long-rod penetrator after the winds caught it and pulled it away. One of the four petals of the shoe was embedded in the front-right fender of the stopped car, the other three landed harmlessly. The penetrator, fashioned out of depleted uranium surrounded by a tungsten-mithiril or tungsten-gundanium woven shell, traveled straight into the upper chest of the assailant, whose last facial expression was mouth agape and wide-eye shock at seeing a Mendel Armor Sniper less than twenty yards from him. Oops. The slug, in its 12 milliseconds of transit time through the tango, imparted enough physical kinetic energy to him that the net effect was all his comrades got to see his torso literally shredded into chunks and strips of red matter and bone fragments that was distributed in a roughly conical arc for ten meters behind him. His legs and arms were thrown clear of the impact area, and in one real ironic turn of fate his head did not clear backwards, it went up ten yards and fdown again, landed on the hood of the car, still wearing the same expression of shock that he had at the moment of impact.

Such is the effect on a person from a rifle designed to blow through the cockpit armor of all but the heaviest of Gundams. _And Mendel is preparing to start building the heavier LongBow ASR_, Dale thinks just as the head rolls to a stop on the hood of the car. The MASR-20 series of ASR was often called the ShortBow, in deference to the larger and far more powerful LongBow.

"ANYONE ELSE?" Dale shouts over his external speakers as he resets his stance and rifle from recoil, shifting his positioning to present them the class-3 armor shield (5) toward their ranks, as discouragement for them to take a shot at him. The whole combined force used that more or less as a clarion call to step forward and take command of the situation, which Dale had just cock-blocked a second time in ten minutes.

Strangely enough, his actions did not shock them to complete inaction, and the reaction of one caused a cascade of fire from the whole of the enemy forces. In less than five seconds, the air became choked with propellant from recoilless rockets and the fumes of cooked-off explosives from grenades, mixed with the propellant of Magi assault rifle and light autocannon rounds. Interspersed in the fray was the glowing beams of IC-7 Ion Cannon and the ISL series of lasers carried by the Armored Infantry. This was very quickly joined by the weapons of the Battle Armor troops, Support PPCs, Support Lasers, Machine Guns of multiple sizes, and missiles of the short, medium and long ranges.

The whole of the planning had just gone out the window, degenerating into a melee fought literally across a single street, from building to building, between two Stars of Magi Armored Infantry (one of Marines, one of Battle Armor) and three companies of Grenadiers. And this was all before the big-gun machines had even sighted each other up.

-x-x-x-

Biggs was definitely dead. Neil had never seen someone die in such a messy fashion, not even those few times a damned GINN had managed to draw a bead on infantry, back when he was fighting the Coordinator bastards down in Panama.

That meant that the estimates on the power, range, and accuracy of the Magi Armor Sniper Rifles were way the hell off, if it could actually kill a Windam and make a precision shot like what had just covered him in his loader's gore, then they definitely were bad-ass motherfuckers among a whole army full of 'em. And if this guy was a native Magi Armor Sniper, one of the original from the _Mjolnr_, that meant he had a good three years training before he even set foot outside his training base, and then another two years field training in his first assignment. No chance in hell a Earth Alliance sniper was even comparable to them.

"ANYONE ELSE?" The Armor Sniper shouts, as clear warning that harassing a civilian was a death warrant in his eyes. Neil could definitely tell the Sniper was a guy, as he had that kind of voice that just spoke volumes of his discipline and will. He definitely would have been a hard-ass Command Sergeant Major in the Earth Alliance, if he wasn't a specialist Magi Point Officer.

"Fall back!" Neil shouts as loud as he could, just as the first of the Mendel Marines started showing up from around or in the commercial structures. Neil suddenly realized that what he had thought was civilians in the stores at range was not civilians, it was these guys taking positions of cover and concealment. He ran as fast as he could back toward the building, a blessedly short ten meters until he was behind a cinder-block construction. Most others had done the same, though those already behind cover had begun sighting in the enemy across the street.

Neil could not tell who shot first. He thought it was one of the grenade launchers on his side, though he had to admit that the enemy grenade launchers were the same weapon, only mounted to their armor so they could carry it and about a half-dozen more weapons. The first grenade launcher was joined by a second, and the distinctive sounds of recoilless rifles firing, sending five-pound rockets downrange toward the Mendel forces, and those were answered by the enemy CIWS and AMS weapons, blowing them clean out of the sky. Grenades were tossed, as well as some assault rifle fire, as most of the Mendel forces were still preparing arms and sighting up.

**CRACK**. Pause of a half second. **CRACK**. Pause of a half second. **CRACK**. Pause of a half second. **CRACK**. The Armor Sniper had done the strangest thing, he had hip-fired his weapon four times into not visible targets, but at the structures and objects that they were hiding behind, apparently trying (and succeeding) at killing the enemy behind. The massive semi-auto bolt on the rifle locked open as the Sniper dropped it aside, as he reached back to one of the weapons dangling from the back of his right shoulder plate. The weapon that he shouldered and aimed forward was a M4 assault rifle, technically weaker than the Earth Alliance assault rifles, but in practice it could outdo the Earth Alliance since their targeting systems were so damn effective.

A PPC streak missed him by a matter of two meters, and he could feel the air superheated as it passed by and into a house behind the scene of the battle. He sighted up the shooter while hiding most of his body behind a wall, and fires. The recoilless rifle rocket zooms to and strikes the Minuteman armor in the arm, though the rocket hit and caused no significant damage to the shooter, just blast scoring and fragmentation that bounced off the heavy plates of his armor. As Neil ducked back to reload his recoilless rifle, the second PPC shot from that point (6) came a lot closer to where he was, the third and fourth were complete misses, though the fifth hit Jim dead in the chest and dropped him to the ground. Out of his squad of eight, Jim was the third to go down.

Neil ducked around the corner again to fire again, and this time he hit one of the Armored Infantry in the chest; the volume of missile fire guaranteed that some would take hits, and the enemy AMS systems could not target grenade launchers so those were getting through...most of the time. The hit Neil delivered struck a magazine well integrated into the chest plate, and the fragments caused the ammunition contained in the magazine to cook off all twelve of the mags for whatever weapon those applied to. The paired explosions knocked the trooper backwards and down onto the ground, though like usual failed to penetrate the armor and kill the person inside.

_The Earth Alliance may have them in sheer numbers, but one of them is the better of a whole platoon of us_, Neil thinks sardonically while locking in his third rocket. He only had two more besides what he was loading and locking into the recoilless rifle tube right now, and his other spare loads had been chunked by the passage of the Armor Sniper's round through his loader. Effectively, he was almost out of ammo except for the 9mm pistol on his right leg, which definitely would not piss off a Mendel Armored Marine.

**CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK. **Pause of three seconds as Neil hesitated, wondering what weapon Mendel had that could make a sound like that; to Neil it sounded almost like the 76mm Machine Gun used by the GINN mobile suit, but bigger and louder.**CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK. **The ground heaved underfoot as one of the Windams assigned to the Naperville assault landed literally on the house behind the building Neil was covering behind, with four gaping holes in its chest. Neil was spared from falling to the ground from the impact only by being next to a building he could brace on.

"Oh, shit, they got a Slasher up here!"

"Oh, just fucking lovely," Neil replies quietly to the Sergeant's warning. Slasher was a Magi Omnimech dating (like all their designs) back to the days of the Star Empire Wars or earlier, though in the supposed eon and change between then and now that design had only gotten more deadly. Slasher was a strange Omnimech, though, because it mounted the same primary weapons in each pod set, a pair of 110mm Ultra Autocannons, one in each arm, and the weapons in the torso were switched out to suit what else the 'Mech needed. Each of the cannons it had fired four rounds of the 110mm ammunition per cycle, and the cannons had a four-second cycle time (two seconds in Ultra mode). And, to make matters worse, each cannon had a thirty-salvo hopper that could be extended up to 50 salvos in some pod configurations, giving the unit immense battlefield longevity. And those Autocannons were murder on whatever it shot at, be it armor, infantry, structure or air assets, never mind what other weapons it may carry.

"Jesus Christ! That thing's tearing up the Mobile Suits!" Over the sound of the gunfire across the street Neil could not hear the laser emitters on the enemy machines, and there was more than one he knew, but he could see the beams headed toward the Mobile Suits that had stacked up down West Ogden, covering themselves from Armor Sniper involvement. Neil looked around the corner again, to see who he would want to apply another rocket to, and that one that he had shot seconds ago was standing again and about in the middle of Washington street, along with about a dozen other Armored Infantry.

"Whaddya think, Vic, Sarge?" Of their squad, that was all that was left. Neil looked left to see one of the guys from 4th Squad go down hard, four rounds from am automatic shotgun tearing his face and chest up badly.

"I think we got corncobbed," Vic shouts over the sound of the gunfire and explosions on Ogden Avenue. Something was launching large amounts of missiles at the rest of the brigade, and a lot of things were blowing up and cooking off down the way.

**WRAAM**. Neil did not strictly know what had happened. One moment he was looking at the Sergeant, planning to ask him to call it off, but before he could even open his mouth the whole world went fuzzy, disoriented and motion-blurred with what looked like chunks of the wall flying past him, then black.

-x-x-x-

"Thanks for the assist, 'Mechwarrior," Victoria notes.

"Any time, ground-pounders." Seeing one of the classic Clan Omnimech chassis with a weapon like a Thunderbolt-20 on it was significantly rare, since it was not one of the normal pod configurations. The flip side was that with an Omnimech, you could put basically anything you want into the pods so long as it matched or was smaller than the maximum mass and space tolerances that the chassis could handle. In this case, the pilot had been all too willing to hammer flat the three commercial structures to prevent the enemy infantry from springing traps from behind them, and he started with the one nearest Gina. One structure, one missile. End of story.

"How're you feeling, Gina?" Adel asks as they close up on the rubble, some weapons on the pile of rubble, other weapons on the trees and houses behind the building.

"Oh, just wonderful, in fact so wonderful I feel like getting laid right now." Though she said one thing, her tone said that she wanted to kill someone by bare hands right now, and would do so if she had one good chance for it.

"Huh? Movement in that rubble pile!" Dale says as he takes aim to where he thought he saw movement. "I think we have a live one, here."

"Mechwarrior, this is Gina. Looks like you got one alive, want to claim him as bondsman?" Technically, the force or unit that took the enemy down had first dibs on taking bondsmen, second would be the unit that physically captured the prisoner, and third would fall to a general pool of bondsmen to be distributed as general isorla (7) among the whole Empire.

"Neg, Marine. If you want him, you may claim him."

"Clear. I think we shall." Gina had approached the pile and racked her MAR-23L Armor Assault Rifle. It was the new, local-produced version of the venerable Armor Assault Rifle, but it had one major difference from prior versions: it had a phase-shift receiver, breech and barrel that allowed it to use a cartridge 50 percent more powerful than the older versions of the rifle. As a result, proper use of the MAR-23L could take down a GINN or Strike Dagger, and cause significant damage to anything else on the battlefield. "Victoria, Adel, give me a hand hauling this surat out of the rubble."

"Aff," Adel says as she slinks around the pile of what was once a building to where she could get to him without crushing him underneath more rubble.

"Well, let's see what we have hiding in the rock-pile, quiaff?" Gina gives a lift to the chunk that was more or less centered over his chest and tosses it aside, away from his body. Victoria and Adel do likewise, managing to remove the majority of the debris from the guy in one good throw. Under him, they could not help but notice the—"

"Hey, Gina, suddenly I get the feeling this is the guy that managed to put one in your chest plate," Adel notes after a few moments.

"No shit, Sensei," Gina replies tersely, now a bit disgusted that the tango that had killed all her ready reloads for her M4 had survived the wrath of the Thunderbolt-20. "Y'know, I'm tempted to say just bury his ass back and move on."

"But you won't, because you're better than those Blue Cosmos assholes in the enemy ranks," Adel retorts.

"Yeah, you're right, but don't doubt for a moment that I won't have his ass for lunch if he is Blue Cosmos."

"Just save me a leg if you do cook his ass over a bonfire," Dale adds as a wan addition to a strange joke.

"Medic to my location ASAP, wounded tango captured," Gina puts out on the Cluster frequency. It took no more than thirty seconds for a MedTech to show up and begin processing him for final extraction from the rubble and medical support. A Heavy MASH vehicle had set up on N. Elsworth Street, about fifty yards south of Ogden Avenue, and was receiving casualties from civilians and Earth Alliance ranks. So far, no Magi personnel had taken any notable hits, but between the first skirmish in Naperville and the end of this siege that would change drastically. Given enemy numbers, casualties were not expected, they were impossible to avoid.

"So, what now my lady?" Dale asks with a level intonation. He frequently referred to Gina by the title 'my lady' and without any decent explanation as to why. Gina, for the most part, did not really care except for the fact that Dale was five years older than she was. Victoria, Jill and Adel thought it rather amusing, though they knew Dale had no chance of putting a move on Gina since said person's heart was still with her boyfriend out in Colorado.

"I say we follow the armor down the road and beat the hell out of some more Earth Alliance forces. Sound good to you guys?"

"If ever you to get off on something, it has to be killing Earth Alliance forces."

"Oh hell yes," Gina replies deadpan to Victoria's comment. "Their legal rulings and double standards allowed some thugs to kill everyone important in my life and be declared heroes for it. Why should I afford their force structures and government institutions any level of courtesy after that shit?"

"She's got you there, Victoria," Jill notes; "and I am right behind her."

"That is...a bit violent," Adel comments on their Point Commander's logic.

"All our lives, we're raised to believe that violence is wrong. When we see, hear, or read about violence, our political correctness conditioning kicks in and we think 'that is bad, we can't do that'. Then here comes these fucking wackos from a totally different dimension who embrace the use of violence to solve problems big and small, and everyone and their grandma is ready to slay them mercilessly. Yet, how are the nations of the world different from Mendel at the end of the day, especially when the Earth Alliance uses nuclear weapons against civilian colonies? When Blue Cosmos kills coordinators at random, just because of how they were conceived and born?"

There was silence on the radio frequency for a few moments. "They are not. You just blew the lid off the local hypocrisy, kid," Star Colonel Elexis Fletcher notes; their sensors immediately point out that she was directly behind them at a range of five meters. Said Star Colonel was the commanding officer of their Cluster, and being a eugenic of the Fletcher bloodheritage was more than capable of conducting a real throw-down and winning just about every time. "And it is our time to teach the local hypocrite committee that fucking with the descendants of a Star Empire is the last mistake they will make, for whatever reason they use to justify it. Because, at the end of the day we only have one reason to fight: life."

"Our lives, the lives of the innocent and the uninvolved are more valuable than the lives of the svashri dezgra surats (8) that want us dead. All we have to do is bring the whoopass to them first," Dale notes coldly. "And that's why I am an Armor Sniper."

"Move it up, Point Commander. We've still got most of a brigade to beat the shit out of, and not all day to do it in."

"Anyone know why they started this late in the day?" Victoria asks for general consumption. The actual shooting had started just prior to noon, and conventional wisdom held that an invasion is best started at daybreak.

"Sixty to one, the Earth Alliance brass is a collection of incompetent fucktards. We can't come up with a better explanation, Point Officer. Ask them yourselves when you catch one, ne?"

"Aff, Star Colonel. Point, form up on me, we're moving West."

Before two steps could be taken, a pair of fighters screamed low overhead, Earth Alliance Skygrasper types. These were followed by the fighter that Gina was unable to recognize earlier in the day—

"Ah, that's the new Skygrasper II Aerofigher. Helluva lot more whoopass than the original Skygrasper and now as survivable as our 40-ton Omnifighters," Star Colonel Fletcher notes.

"That's one of ours? It's four times bigger than the Skygrasper, and it's still chasing them down?"

"Damn straight. I don't know the details, but I do know it is space-capable and can carry two Strike Pack assemblies. Be afraid, kiddies."

Said fighter had followed the enemy back up to 2000 meters as they banked and rolled left, trying to get the hell away from this demon that looked like their craft. Two lines of tracers lanced out of the craft, one from each wing root, and they walked right through the main body of the rearward fighter. It continued flying for a second, then the frame started disintegrating as pieces of the craft fell apart, until the turbine engines of the Skygrasper shredded apart and the main frame of the craft started falling down toward the suburbs below. That one done, the Skygrasper II followed the second bogey down into a split-S turn, though the pilot had a better idea than chasing him down to the deck again, he loosed an AMRAAM-A-VII Air-to-air missile and reefed his fighter hard right, headed back in on the heavy ground action. The missile immediately locked on to the enemy craft that was broadcasting a known hostile IFF and bored straight in, completely ignoring the chaff and flares the pilot hastily deployed. The missile hit with a skin-on-skin kill, the warhead detonating between the cockpit and the main engine turbine, quickly blowing the main body of the craft into two separate halves that hit the ground about two kilometers west of where Gina was standing.

"Skygrasper II, this is Star Colonel Fletcher, 4th Marine Cluster. Killer shooting, pilot, if you need verification on those tangos down, call me. A half-dozen of us had eyes on when you hosed them, over."

"Roger that, Star Colonel, I'll list you as a reference when I take my complaint right to their Division CP. Skygrasper II, over and out."

"Well, the war is waiting, shall we go smack some bitches up?" Star Colonel Fletcher asks Gina's point, who nods.

Along the way, Gina's point stopped at a deployed CGMM-17G3 Cargomaster Heavy Cargo Transport to draw reloads for their weapons they had used. The one they raided for ammo had two Cargo trailers and a Rear Guard trailer, the third trailer had a monster turret on it that had an ATM/9 (see footnote 9) and a Rotary 105mm Autocannon. Basically, it was a heavy cargo vehicle that carried no cargo in the main vehicle, just in the trailers. One Cargomaster could carry any combination of three trailers, though for combat resupply they usually carried two Cargo Trailers and one Rear Guard trailer, giving them some semblance of defensive power. The next Cargomaster down Ogden avenue, trailing behind the front line of ZAKU machines and Omnimechs, had a Rear Coolant trailer designed to connect to and cool down a hot 'Mech while Ordinance Techs reloaded its big guns. There was also a MASH trailer option, and an option for the central trailers that had two Arrow-IV Artillery Pieces. All in all, the Cargomaster was a good way to get beans and bullets to the fighting troops safely, and multi-purpose to boot which made it a very lovable design for the Magi style of fighting.

Gina had to eject the Mag Well for her M4 weapon, replacing the integrated chest holder with a new one from spares in the cargo transport and reloading it with preloaded mags from the ammo crates. Of her Ma Deuce heavy machine gun she had only fired a few dozen rounds, so reloading it was not a concern. She drew a dozen more hand grenades, since they were very useful in this terrain, and also picked up a pair of Javelin tubes, having them attached to her shoulder-plates as fire-and-forget weapons for dealing serious threat to Mobile Suits. To add to her existing load she also drew a pair of battery packs to add power to her IC-7 Infantry PPC, just in case and all that.

As Gina was drawing new ammo, so was the rest of her point. After they finished topping off their magazines and recharging their energy weapons, Gina's point headed westward, into the inferno that was fast becoming Chicago.

-x-x-x-

(Time ref: Day two, 1645 hours)

Neil remembered coming out of his unconsciousness haze twice, it was a partial consciousness that did not last long before he went back under by some unrecognized reason. The third time, he woke up and stayed there, just moments before something pressed against his leg and made a pneumatic hissing sound. When he looked, it was some kind of a contact injection device that a MedTech had applied to the side of his left leg and fired half a cartridge into.

"What's that for?" Neil asks the medic blearily.

"Awake now?" She does not wait for any flavor of answer before plowing on: "That's a booster for the Nanos my CO used to repair your leg. We kept you under so you wouldn't move it while your leg was repaired internally."

"I broke it? How?" Neil could not remember anything he did after taking the shot at that Armored Marine...

"Don't remember? Well, you were hiding behind a building, preparing to use a RR tube on whoever approached, so a Marine point had the building you were hiding behind leveled by Thunderbolt missile. You were trapped in the scattered rubble."

Neil remembered he was with the Sarge and— "There were two others with me, where did they—" the look away from the MedTech was answer enough.

"There were two others in that rubble. One was DOA, the other died on the operating table." Fantastic, hyper-advanced technology or not, Mendel doctors were not miracle workers or Gods, and sometimes you couldn't save them all, allied or enemy.

"Great, I'm the only survivor of my squad, second time in a row," Neil sighs. "Such is fate."

There was a rather derisive snort from the left; Neil looked to see a Minuteman Battle Armor trooper standing guard over the medical ward. " 'And then the warrior asks, 'Why do the Fates do this to me?' To which, Ragnarok answers: 'Fate is neither cruel nor kind; Fate is life written forward and back, controlling or manipulating nobody. To understand fate, to understand life, you must live.' ' Quote the Remembrance of Erich Hess."

"Erich Hess?" The name was completely unfamiliar to Neil.

"Magi history. Erich Hess was a Division Commander of the Magi Caste, and often considered the most powerful wizard in all Existence. Incredibly ruthless, and not afraid to manipulate the laws of time and space to do what he wanted. Not the kind of guy you cross on particulars."

"And how many of these Wizards does Mendel really have?" It was the question that everyone in the Earth Sphere wanted to know.

"Officially, none. We got fucked hardcore by the Admiralty Review and Assignment Board, they did not assign us a Strategic Mage like they were supposed to. So, we settle that another day. Unofficially, I think we have one Mage in our ranks, Gerald Lightbringer, but that is just my personal opinion and he denies having any such talents."

"Oh." So that much of what Mendel had been saying all along was true, they did not have any of the namesake Mages that caused five other Star Empires from where they came to shit bricks.

"What's the word, doc?" the Trooper asks as she was going over some rather complex instrument panels, definitely not something native to a hospital in the Earth Alliance. At a guess, Neil figured them some form of sensor that was dedicated to medical purpose instead of weapons targeting.

"He can stand, but he's on light lift and strain restriction for the next four hours, until the Nanos are through."

"Think he can handle a cargo exoskeleton?"

"Easily," the MedTech replies.

"All right, Bondsman Neil, you have two choices, you can spend a good chunk of your life in the brig on one of the Dropships, and maybe before your pension kicks in you will get released. Maybe. Or you can serve as a proper Bondsman, and maybe that point of Marines that had captured you will cut you loose relatively soon." _Relatively Soon_ was a phrase that left a lot of open territory, though.

Since his pension was well over thirty years off, and since his loyalty to the Earth Alliance was not that powerful after basically being consigned to his death by the EA Brass in Naperville this morning, that didn't leave a whole helluva lot of options in Neil's opinion. "I'll do what you guys want, except fight the Earth Alliance."

"Neg, we would not ask you to do that unless you wanted to. No, you shall aid in pulling relief supplies off the cargo Dropships in from Aube. I take it you can drive some complex machinery?"

"I'm rated on Tracked and Wheeled vehicles, if that's what you are asking."

"Hrm." The Trooper pauses for about twenty seconds, for what Neil did not know. "Well, HR does not say they need tracked or wheeled pilots, but they do need people who can pilot a cargo exoskeleton to pull the stuff off Dropships and load it onto trucks headed into town."

"I'll do it." _Anything beats the hell out of jail_, Neil thinks aloud. He had spent plenty of time in the brig over his career, and was not intent on returning to it.

"Very well, out the door and a hundred meters north is a transport loading up right now. Get on it."

"Yessir." Neil was out the door without another word. After a few cooridors of following the 'exit' signs, he came across a mural that said Chicago University Hospital. So, he was now in downtown Chicago? Strange, that, yet he did not complain at all.

_Being a live Bondsman beats the hell out of the alternative_, he thinks sardonically, then remembers that his two friends in his squad did not get that luxury, just as everyone else in the squad did not. On the face of it, he really didn't care about the fates of those Blue Cosmos pricks, anyways; only the Sergeant and Vic were really worth it, the rest were or were aspiring to be your basic thugs and rapists. That the Mendel forces killed them would not haunt his dreams at all, and if he knew Mendel psychology it would not haunt their dreams either. This was a glorious crusade to them, to sweep away the hated, vile, stinking, evil Earth Alliance and replace it with something that gave people the right to live.

As he boarded the designated bus headed up to the airport, there were already a dozen other Bondsmen who were resting from their own injuries suffered. He took a seat in the middle of the bus, across the way from someone who looked like he had been on the wrong end of a shotgun and just barely survived by luck. "What unit you with?"

"10th Grenadiers, 8th Brigade. You?"

"4th Shock Brigade." He snorts. "The only group doing the shocking today seems to be Mendel, though. Some twist of fate, eh?"

" 'Fate is neither cruel nor kind; Fate is life written forward and back, controlling or manipulating nobody,' " Neil recites of his major history lesson for the day (if you did not count the lesson that the Negaverse, the Illyaris, the Dark Moon could have forewarned them of: never fuck with Magi, they don't like losing).

"Where'd you pick that up? Sounds philosophical."

"Believe it or not, them."

"Them? Mendel?" The same officer asks. "I didn't think they had it in 'em, the way their Infantry drags their knuckles..."

"Keep telling yourself that," Neil says. "That was a bit of ancient history from their parent Empire, told to me by one of their Battle Armor troops."

"If their basic troops are taught stuff like that, they definitely ain't knuckle-draggers," an Ensign notes from two seats back.

"Doesn't matter what we thin, the war's over for us," the same Private says. "Though, I do have to admit that the possibility of a get-out-of-jail-free card is nice, for offloading cargo."

"I wonder how they'll neutralize Blue Cosmos," Neil notes as the bus slips into gear and begins the trek toward the airport. In the distance, they could see a _Guild-II_ Dropship coming down, emblazoned with the symbol of ZAFT on it.

For now, he would live supporting the civilians. Tomorrow may be a different story.

* * *

Author's Chapter Afterword:

Welcome to the wonderful world of Armored Infantry.

This is just a sample of the action of the Armored Infantry, as in each story of the Inferno shall all the service groups get to show how it is done. By the time it is all done, you should have a pretty good picture of the way Mendel's Infantry and Marines conduct themselves, including the dreaded Swarm attack and heavy anti-MS operations.

And also, this is just a small look at one section of the overall battle for Chicago. There will be more in-depth looks at other areas of the city as the battle grinds on, to its brutally violent conclusion.

Opinion time: Anyone who reads this is welcome to drop in some word on what you think should be in. I respect opinions and user input. If you got a suggestion for a new or modded Earth Alliance unit or new Mendel design, drop me a review with your proposal. One person already has, and I liked the idea, so it showed up in the story already, the fighter that trashed the two Skygraspers. This is the MSV of the Jokers Wild series, and extras are always welcomed :P

Next up: The armor forces cut loose on the 88 highway into Chicago as the battle really begins to heat up

* * *

Footnotes:

(1): Swarming a vehicle or 'mech means for the unit to physically climb the unit and attack it at point blank, in which case the Infantry runs a good chance of causing severe damage to the 'mechs main systems being that close. Many a good 'mechwarrior has bought it because they underestimated the infantry in close quarters to them.

(2): Moonlight Thunderbolt was the blitz that ended the 3500-year war known as the Star Empire Wars. At the same time that the Negaverse had a crippling revolution that literally split into two separate Empires, the Magi (with assistance from the Illyaris, Dynasty and New Moon Empires) invaded and Absorbed the half of the Negaverse that wanted to continue the war. With this done, and with no more motivation to continue the battles since nobody wanted to press the issue farther, treaties were signed between all six of the Star Empires that officially ended the longest war in Existence.

(3): If you don't really get the gist of this dig, I'm not going to hold it against you. I will explain, however. In deference to Princess Diana of the United Kingdom (deceased), Land Mines left around are a serious hazard to civilians in the area, and even I must admit that the United States is guilty of leaving mines around. The catch is, just because something has the hazard of injuring or killing a civilian, you do not ban it from military use. For damn sure not everyone believes the political correctness that some people push and not using all your (reasonable) capabilities is asking to get your ass handed to you. For this reason I will never trust people that claim we (civilization) do not need a military, since they cannot think any farther than their own little idealistic beliefs. Reality is a cold, hard bitch that does not care one whit for someone's definition of a perfect, civilized, politically correct world. Land Mines stop people, stop vehicles, stop tanks, even can render an airfield unusable. Why bother using personnel to shore up an area when you can put a few dozen $50 land mines down and use the personnel elsewhere?

(4): Japanese for 'Yes' (did I get the spelling right?). The four most common languages among the Magi are (in order from most to least) Japanese, Elven, English, and Russian. In Mendel, Japanese and English are king, though there is a bit of a bent for Mediterranean languages (Greek, Italian being chief) from some of the more recent immigrants.

(5): Shields are listed by class, being class 1 (light, bucklers basically), class 2 (medium shields, knuckle and shoulder shields), class-3 (heavy shields, similar to the shield carried by the RX-78 Gundam), class 4 (Assault shields, basically the Armored Infantry version of the old Roman Legion tower shields or the Physalis shield), and class 5 (Ultra-heavy shields, complete head-to-toes and side-to-side coverage). Armor Snipers, due to their unique role and weapon, cannot normally use any shield larger than a Class 3 shield with their primary weapon, as an Assault Shield or larger interferes with their ability to stabilize and control their rifle.

(6): A Point is the Clan / Magi / Mendel smallest military organization unit, consisting of five Armored Infantry, two fighters, two tanks, or one Mobile Suit or Battlemech. Point Commander is the rank that commands a point.

(7): Another hold-over from when the Magi long ago absorbed the Clans. Isorla literally means 'rightful property', though is often used more as 'the spoils of war'. When used to describe persons, the term often means 'bondsmen', which means that they are required to serve their capturing unit until such a time as they have earned their freedom or a place in the unit that captured them, should they choose to serve alongside their captors. Magi indoctrination is actually good enough to cause at least some to be absorbed into the ranks of the Magi military, as 'Abtahka', or Absorbed Warriors. Abtahka are rather notorious for being fanatical about their duties to the Empire.

(8): Technically that is proper Clan English. Basically, Dale just called them the three worst names in the Clan book, and for good reason.

(9): ATM is Advanced Tactical Missile. They are special Clan missile launchers that can be fed three different types of ammo (standard, long-range or short-range high explosive), and each launcher has advanced targeting systems on it that increase the chances of hitting and missiles that hit. Very powerful missile systems, but a bit more bulky than their LRM or SRM counterparts.

* * *

Murphy's Laws Of Combat Applicable to this section:

(Mendel): When in doubt, empty your magazine.

(Both): When in a fire fight, kill as many as you can, the one you miss may not miss tomorrow.

(Mendel): It is a physical impossibility to carry too much ammo.

(EA): NEVER get into a fight without more ammunition that the other guy


	3. Armored Fists

(03: Armored Fists)

(Time Ref: Day two of Chicago Siege, 1310 hours)

Without doubt, there was a sense of schadenfreude about the Galaxy, that the men and women of the 3rd Mendel Ground Galaxy would take pleasure in terminating the existence of the Earth Alliance combat forces. Such conduct was without a doubt unprofessional, though still it happened much as it had in the heady days of the Star Empire Wars of long past, when the armies had been as vast and diverse as the planets and star systems they fought over, and the hatred had been even larger._Maybe it was the circumstances_, he thought, _we were facing annihilation then, we face it again today, only this time we fight so that more than just us can live_.

Ninyu Hrolfsen was not one of those deriving perverse pleasure in the elimination of the Earth Alliance mobile forces. Sure, he figured, mulching them was necessary but hardly enjoyable. He was simply being his usual cold, hard, calculating self; the same self that had seen his unit and more importantly his girlfriend crater on Galdesse in a testbed mobile assault from the Eternal Darkness. Ninyu wanted to be killing off Mobile Dolls, not these pussies from the Earth Alliance 101st Mobile Brigade.

They had sent ten thousand Mobile Dolls, MMD-06B Virgo III Mobile Dolls that were rival to most Battlemechs and Omnimechs in both staying and shooting power, and a detachment of them had shot his Dropship down during reentry. He was one of a handful that escaped the Dropship; his girlfriend had not escaped, over ninety percent of his unit had not escaped. Ninety-five percent of the planet had been depopulated, men, women, children, all killed by the Mobile Dolls that had once been engineered to provide support to regular Magi forces. It was a hellish charnel house by the time the last of the Mobile Dolls had been slaughtered, numbing to one's mind and soul to see the population of whole cities lined up for counting and cremation, and even Ninyu had lit some of the fires with his mech's lasers. Millions had never been accounted for, there was that little of their bodies left after the Mobile Dolls were through with them. To this day, he could still see the pyres of the deceased when he closed his eyes, that above and beyond watching his Dropship spiral out of control and crash into the Galdesse Megaforest with 100 percent casualties in the remaining personnel.

Today, he was standing in the one army that had a chance of preventing that fate from being repeated throughout all Existence. Mendel had the duty and more than a ration of will to do the right thing, first time, every time, when confronting the Eternal Darkness. ZAFT was too concerned with their notions of global equanimity and fair play (read: global socialism under their rule) to have the wherewithal to face down the Eternal Darkness. Aube qualified as taciturn; their policy of neutrality was ill-suited to deal with an enemy that was trying to kill everyone in Existence. The USSA might be able to do the job right, if they were both larger and more aggressive in their pursuits. Equatorial and Scandanavia, though with no shortage of heart, were simply too small and too non-aggressive for the job. And, of course, the Earth Alliance was far too dead-set on their crusade against 'genetic abominations' to be of any use for anything more than target practice. That left Mendel, but first they had to kill off the one great threat to everyone's life and well being, the Earth Alliance.

No simple task, that. The Earth Alliance, such as it was, comprised all of North America from Panama north, all of Europe except the Gibraltar OZ being held by ZAFT, everything in Asia north of India and north of Cambodia. Simply stated, the Earth Alliance was one very big territory, though like any other foolhardy empire they were too reliant on a central 'heart' of command and control edifice, giving them an incredible Achilles' Heel for Mendel to blow off. That C&C heart rested in Washington, DC, with a strong secondary in Iceland that was slated to be destroyed by direct hot-drop invasion in the coming days. Or they could destroy Heavens Base by suborbital bombardment, it really did not matter. Washington, however, would be the province of an overland assault from the forces in Chicago after the initial counterattack was eliminated, and Star Captain Hrolfsen intended on being at the forefront of that assault when they began in on Washington.

He had come close to death as a Senior Star Colonel, the unit XO for his unit when it cratered in the Galdesse Megaforest; he had taken the chance to help fix this problem in the long run, even though it meant a literal demotion and likely a paycut as well, but in the end his focus in life now was preparing the rest of Existence for the coming of the Eternal Darkness, and Mendel had been the best place available to do that. 4th Trinary, 1 Cluster (Halcyon Cluster) of the 3rd Mendel Ground Galaxy was his command now that he was part of the Mendel Armed Forces. 2 Cluster was known as Chime Cluster, 3 Cluster carried the name Impact USA (which also lent credence to their purpose of being here in Chicago), and 4 Cluster came to be known as Equinox. In essence, the whole Galaxy had been named from the top down after an electronica band from the 1990 era of Old Terra, to the point that the Galaxy itself was named Orbital. This had caused some chafe among the metalheads of the band, but nothing major-time drastic that he had to step in and sort them out.

All of that was a bit of a red herring, though, in the face of the oncoming enemy forces. 3 brigades, almost half of the combined enemy force, was intent on smashing through where he was standing to get to O'Hare Airport. Strangely enough, the enemy had picked the wrong road to travel to get to O'Hare, for some strange-ass reason. The 88 Expressway was over twenty miles south of the airport; the 90 Tollway passed within easy sight of the airport, and that if you were driving along in a passenger car, much less in a Suit or 'Mech.

"What the hell are they thinking?" One of his subordinate Star Commanders asks.

"Fifty C-bills says they be not thinking," Ninyu replies tersely. "They are acting like a bunch of little sibko brats, charge the enemy down and hope you walk away."

"C'mon, Star Captain, the average sibko brat has more brains than that, or at least should have more brains than that."

"True, should have more brains than that, but not always." Star Captain (formerly Star Colonel) Hrolfsen makes an adjustment on his engine console; everything was reading ready to go, all he needed was to force close quarters and begin hacking their machines to pieces.

"Attention Orbital Galaxy forces, this is Century Commander Malthus. You'll get more detailed intel in a few seconds, but before the march orders come in I want to make one thing infinitely clear to you ladies and gentlemen: your force is the linchpin in the Chicago defense. The enemy is intent on stomping up the 88 into the heart of Chicago and northward to the airport. If we lose too much ground between Aurora and Naperville, the center of our lines could collapse and that's it for the invasion of North America. Keep the assholes out of the area at all costs, people. And now, over to your Galaxy Commander for more detailed operational planning."

"This is Galaxy Commander Drake to all forces, Orbital Galaxy. By now you've all been watching our forces kick ass and tattoo names on the 55 and the 57, not to mention skirmishing on the 294 to the north. So far, we've proved that the Magi are the kings of Defense, piss on what the EA brass throws at us. Now, for the bad news: the enemy has received the memo loud and clear, they know we aren't going to give up Aurora without a helluva fight. The Command elements want me to give up territory sparingly, though they do want me to trade land for time when needed. I don't really want to give them anything more than jack and shit loaded in a missile salvo. We can hold Aurora, especially with the reinforcements that are supposed to be coming our way. All we have to do is make very creative use of the terrain and put our shots on target."

"A lovely way of stating it," Ninyu mutters. Putting shots on target was a fun passtime of Magi (now Mendel) forces, so that was probably going to be the easier of the operational directives the Mendel forces got from the Galaxy Commander.

"Now the fun part, ladies and gentlemen, since we intend on giving them hell for every square meter of Aurora they want to take, this means we are going to end up fighting up close and real personal over the next two days, three tops. I'm not going to tell you guys how to fight; some of you are more veteran than I am. I am going to say that your forces will be issued hunting patches by the Trinary and you will receive no shortage of frag orders to execute as well. It's possible that if ten percent of the enemy has ten percent of the brains they were birthed with, some of us may not walk away from this one. I don't believe they are intrinsically that stupid, so we're going to have a rough go of this, yet I know we can win in Aurora without giving it up, even temporarily."

"Great, hold at all costs. How much are we going to bleed before the day is over?" Jun asks. The Senior Star Commander under Ninyu was by nature a pessimist, where most Mendel personnel were grim but otherwise forward-looking people at heart.

"It is not a question of how much we bleed today, Jun, it is a question of how much the rest of this world bleeds in the coming months if we don't win here, and a question of how much of the rest of Existence bleeds if we don't survive to do our jobs in the coming eons." That Ninyu was willing to think that far ahead was quite chilling to the rest of his Trinary.

"Whoa," from the same Star Commander.

"Never thought about it that way, did you?" Giselde was the commander of Ninyu's Skirmisher Star. Adept at just about any range, they had turned out to be best at the medium-short interface of 800 to 1000 meters combat, which was just about where normal forces started dropping off accuracy big-time. A country Belle at heart, Giselde almost seemed grossly out of place in a Battlemech cockpit, until you saw her actually fight with it. She was walking, talking proof that piloting a Battlemech was more than just a set of numbers on your codex; by all accounts, she should not have had the coordination or motor skills to do it. And she was not talking as to how she could do it.

"Kiss my ass, Giselde," Jun replies tersely.

"Are you through, 4th of Halcyon?" Galaxy Commander Drake asks, instantly bringing to attention the fact that while they were listening to the galaxy frequency, they were also set to broadcast on it through at least one of their machines.

"Aff, Galaxy Commander," Ninyu replies sharply.

"Well, in as far, the interruption from 4th of Halcyon basically covers my last as well. We do this right, today, or a month from now this planet goes to hell and in the eons to come the Eternal Darkness will kill off everything else in Existence worth talking about. And yes, it really _is_ that simple, Equinox Cluster, this really is a case of 'us or them' and I bet every one of you can guess who the 'us' side is." When frustrated at his subordinates, Drake was well known to be a bit on the sharp and derisive side. "Now, any questions?"

"Neg, sir," Jun replies instantly. The explanation had indeed been very straightforward and needed no major clarification.

"What's our release for artillery?" Someone from Chime Cluster asked.

"We have priority for air and artillery support at present, since it appears that the enemy has decided that the southern approach is a bit bogged down and they aren't going to press for now, just use their weaker artillery units to try and 'soften' our Naperville and Oak Forest defenses. I'll hold my breath for a loud raspberry for the LOGOS bastards; I ain't holding in anticipation of them breaking through those lines. Which really means we can decide the battle and the war by not screwing up, people," he says.

-x-x-x-

(Time ref: 1350 hours)

"All right, people, I have only one thing to say at this time on taking back Chicago. We need to do this right, first time. We've already taken one hell of a beating on the two southern fronts as their forces—particularly their infantry—have proved that they have helluva killing power. Even against our armor and mobile suit forces. We've done very little to their ground forces in Aurora, actually, and the brass thinks they think we're going to shoot down the 90 to assault O'Hare direct. Actually, we're going to bust down the 88, take Aurora for use as staging, and then we are going to run up the 88 into town and then north to the airport."

"I get the feeling this isn't going to work," Rika notes to her CO, who definitely was one of the lowest-ranking officers in the room. All she got from her CO was a pinch on the leg as warning to be silent.

"This will work, predicated on the fact that we can breach their lines here. The enemy is characteristically weak here and here, centered on the 88 is close to what we would call a regiment, slightly smaller but probably no less capable. This Galaxy, which we believe called the Orbital Galaxy, is a scratch-up of Magi spare forces from all over their armored services, with what we can tell is a clear hodgepodge of machines and tactics and unit compositions. They are a walking lesson in military disorganization, and they are unevenly spread out and apparently unevenly led."

"I definitely don't think Magi can be called 'disorganized' at any level," Rika says to her CO, who instead of pinching her nods just slightly. After that, Rika doubted anyone in the room except their Lieutenant General was being fooled by the bullshit from on high.

"Now, while they appear to have a full Cluster centered on the 88 itself, with a good combination of long-range and short-range capabilities, the two ancilliary wings of that guard, to the north and south, appear to be less concentrated and less of a cohesive whole as they are here in the center. That is how we are going to play this battle, actually, before they know what hit them we intend on smashing through both those sides and onward to secure the crossing at the Fox river. With that held, we establish a beachhead on the far side and we just pump reinforcements into the enemy territory until we squeeze them off planet."

"Don't the Magi think of force in numbers as just more targets?" Rika asks for not the first time in the prior week. The war was inevitable; how they went about it was the great big mystery to the Earth Alliance brass, though, and by the time they found out it was grossly too late to even begin stopping it. Now, technically, the Earth Alliance was on the defensive and to even break out with negotiations at an even field they had to boot the Mendel forces out of the Atlantic Federation area. Eurasia was a cluster-fuck to begin with, much less after Mendel began ops in that area; everyone was writing off the Eurasian government as a complete loss, and that included the Eurasian Government. ZAFT's Gibraltar and Carpentaria bases were getting a severe workout as well, providing support to Mendel's clearly superior ground forces and shuttling relief supplies to the battle zones for civilians.

"Yeah," Belle replies. Belle was Rika's main competition in their company, though she always wondered how Magi and Mendel Trinaries handled their internal competitiveness.

"We have two major assets to support the ground advance: first off, we have all the heaviest artillery we could get our hands on, and then some. Second, we have possession of the Aurora Municipal Airport, which though is in artillery range to the enemy forces, they have not done anything significant to it yet. We think they already think this airport is disabled for flight purposes, so they are not really paying attention to it. The area commander intends on using this and the Dekalb Airport as major flight bases for our Skygraspers. We will need the air support."

"And they have 'mechs specially designed to shoot airplanes down," Rika notes.

"Who pissed in your Wheaties this morning?" Belle asks.

"Through arguing, ladies?" Their Colonel asks.

"Yes, sir," Emerald (her CO) notes.

"Good. Every major argument you have traded over the briefing I've tried to answer; while you thought you were being fairly quiet, I heard you up here, and I can guess so has everyone else in your vicinity. Yes, they think and act different from us, they train to fight numbers _and_ elite tactics, they have a different form of organization, which we don't really believe is organized, and they have dedicated anti-air assets. And they have massive artillery pieces and ten foot dicks. Any other quips?"

"If that last is true, capturing a few of them might not be a bad idea," Belle notes. "We'd still have to kill them in the end, but, well, y'know," her gesture and rather open-ended comment drew some laughs from those around her.

"Enough with the pervert jokes, pilot. Now, as to what forces will go where, the 101 light and the 67 shock will go toward the north, centering their assault on Oak Street, where the enemy appears to be the thinnest to the north. We punch through here and we have a heavy industrial complex to hide in while we reinforce for the push toward the 88 bridge over the Fox River. The 34th Heavy will go south, centered on West Indian Trail, with the same objective and expected resistance. While this will split our forces into two distinct attack vectors with little opportunity to support each other, this will also force the enemy to split his effort in two directions to counter us, that is, if he understands that is what we are doing. If they do not figure it out, well, tough rocks as we drive onward into the heart of Chicago."

"Not betting on them being that dumb," Rika notes.

"Okay, I know you've been asked this once before, pilot, so who **did** piss in your Wheaties today?" The Lieutenant General over her unit requests. That brought all sound in the tent to a complete standstill.

"Lieutenant General, I would like to officially blame her for the yellow-colored Wheaties this morning." Since it was a bullshit question to begin with, the bullshit answer as she pointed at Belle was good for quite the laugh. "Sir, I don't really care what the Earth Alliance intel weenies think. My father was a pilot in a whole company that was shredded at the battle of Yakin Doe by one enemy pilot. Just one enemy pilot in one of their 'outdated' machines killed a dozen Strike Daggers. They really are that good. Yes, they can be killed. We've probably already killed two, three battalions worth in the past two hours, more if we are lucky and the devil is chillin' below. I'll bet my paycheck that has only pissed the rest of them off."

Her saying such was putting voice to the fears of the whole unit, and all their commanders knew it. "You're right, they are very pissed off and they are not going to take an assault sitting on their thumbs, Lieutenant. And I will readily say we've had staggering losses on the 55 and 57." The Lieutenant General scratches his goatee as a delay, thinking about how to go about his next turn of phrase. "What would you have us do, or do you really believe we have already lost?"

"Sir, they are not going to give up Chicago and the Earth Alliance doesn't have the firepower to kick them off planet, not even in our wildest dreams, unless you want to erase Chicago off the map completely." There were a few assents to that mostly drowned out in a rather guttural groan from the masses. Many of the personnel in the room were Blue Cosmos, yes, but almost none of them were bloodthirsty enough to kill off ten million civilians just to uproot an enemy assault force. "And that is counting our fair-weather allies in Aube. Last week's paycheck says Aube is already crapping solid steel bricks over Mendel's invasion. Sir, they are trained and outfitted to fight wars of attrition, and that is exactly what we are giving them."

"So, we sit back, hammer on them with artillery while they reinforce, and when they have enough personnel in place they will come to us, right?"

"Sir, I—"

"You don't need to answer. I've already fielded every other option I could muster to the command staff. They believe that the appearance of losing here in Chicago is going to be enough to bring down the Earth Alliance, so this must be done at all costs. God, I wish I didn't have to ask you to do this, pilot, not today, not ever, but it has to be done. We have to hammer a beachhead to their innards, so that what we lose today isn't in vain, or within the week the whole Atlantic Federation will be in a state of revolt worse than Eurasia." The Lieutenant General definitely did not sound like the all-piss-and-vinegar Theater General, he sounded like he was having a genuinely bad day and Rika could tell he knew he had lost as well. She figured orders were orders, for the Alliance, for Mendel, for Aube, did not matter. "I hope you get a good chance at vengeance today, kid. Most of us will not come back from this one, and that includes me. Continue, Colonel Stafford."

The Colonel was looking grim as well; after having his inner dread dredged out of whatever hole he had buried it in, he had seen the truth in Rika's continual complaining. The Earth Alliance was patently unsuited to this form of warfare, yet they had to do it or the Earth Alliance was toast, and he had just been reminded of that fact. "All right, people, your move orders have already been uploaded to your machines. You will be paced into the battlefield by generator trucks, and the generators will be on standby if you start running low. The enemy is primarily ground vehicles and battlemechs, we suspect they will have air support and artillery as well. Don't give them a break, as they will not give us one. Further instructions will come down the pipe in transit. Mount up and prepare to march. Dismissed."

-x-x-x-

(Time Ref: 1645 hours)

Earlier in the day the air forces of both sides had retired back to their respective airfields to refit, repair, refuel, and rearm, and then a rather random air battle had started up north and east of Chicago proper, out over Lake Michigan. That had Ninyu rather worried about his prospects for air support from the airheads, since that battle (though nothing major) put the bulk of Mendel's air forces headed in the opposite direction from where three fresh Brigades were headed toward him. Seven regiments of enemy forces were about to come head to head with the two-regiment-equivalent Orbital Galaxy. Three and a half tangos to one, basically.

Nothing new to Ninyu. Five Mobile Dolls against one Banshee Damocles was doable, so would this be.

"Star Captain Ninyu, Star Captain Anastus, 3rd of Rose Cluster, 1st Mendel Heavy Armor," their newest arrival announced on his Trinary command frequency.

"Good Morning," Ninyu says, despite it being well past noon. "Any ideas as to where you want to set up so far?"

"I was thinking Harmony Court, stack up behind and around the civilian houses for concealment. Those structures are evacuated, right?" Mendel forces would not knowingly use an inhabited structure as concealment, such was considered provoking an enemy to shoot civilians and considered very bad form and dishonorable.

"Yes, the Marines went in and got the remainder out. It's about obvious that they will be along, no sense leaving civilians in the line of fire."

"Roger that, Star Captain. You have any recommendations as to where we place?"

"Neg, Harmony Court gives me good left flank protection, I like it already. Now, I should warn you guys not to get too comfortable, I intend on falling back after we've banged them up pretty bad. They probably are going to throw some good shit at us today, they ain't going to charge down the 88 like complete idiots, they will probably do this road and its equivalent to the south."

"Yeah, well, we roll their 'good shit' up and smoke it. Simple as that." From Ninyu all Star Captain Anastus received was a grunt in response. "What's your plan?"

"Fall back while fighting, absorb their fury over the distance of several blocks. Tactically it may be a small loss of zone, but strategically they ain't going to get past 31 for damn sure, they'll be doing good to die in sight of North Cherry Tree Court." For them to die in sight of said street, they would have to push the Magi forces back eight blocks, not a simple feat on a good day. There was basically one good chance over a snowed-in hell (and over Ninyu's dead body) that they would get as far as the 31, which put them in sight to a bridge over the Fox River, but if they did that the bridge would assuredly be dropped into the river by airstrike or artillery, or maybe even suborbital strike.

Ninyu had called up the C3I status and TRO reports of the Third Trinary, Rose Cluster armor forces. He immediately liked what he saw. A Heavy Armor Galaxy is comprised primarily of (wonder of wonders) Heavy Armor assets, ergo tanks weighing over 100 tons. Usually the Galaxy would also incorporate a cluster or slightly more of additional forces, usually aero support, infantry and mobile (MS or Omnimech) forces to give it some extended flexibility. Normally, however, the sole purpose of the Heavy Armor galaxies was to provide a definitive counter to larger numbers of enemy Mobile Army assets, as a Trinary of super-heavy tanks could very easily chew up as much as five or six companies of enemy forces under the right conditions.

This, qualified. Sort of. Everyone was wishing there were more heavier buildings to work with here, to provide more ambush and cover for the defending forces, but the enemy was intent on using the 88 Bridge to cross over to mainland Chicago, which could not be allowed. Only within limits could the assaulting force choose the battleground, and this was one of them._All we have to do is wait for the shits to come in and subject themselves to it_, Ninyu thinks.

_Hrmm, five Guardian Missile Carriers, basically big boxes of missiles on treads_. Those five vehicles had indeed lined up on Harmony Court and were hunkering down to fire indirectly at the enemy. Ninyu particularly liked having their close-range firepower brought to bear, even though they were mostly a long-range support platform with two ELRM-15 launchers (2) and four LRM-15 launchers Ninyu loved watching enemy machines calve armor and body parts when they walked through a volley of the twin MRM-30s on the Guardian. The Large Pulse Laser was more or less pro forma, just something to give it harassing and light target interdiction at shorter ranges, though the TAG Laser was very useful when calling down the thunder from afar.

_Two Badger I Machines, big suckers with two turrets, lots of armor, and some impressive guns_, Ninyu thinks behind a semi-evil smile. When he was operating on Galdesse he had been administratively attached to a unit that had a Badger I as well, and that tank had mulched more than its fair share of Mobile Dolls. The top turret carried two 125mm Ultra Autocannons and enough ammo for 100 seconds of continuous fire at full speed, or 200 seconds at normal speed, as well as three LRM-15 launchers. The lower forward turret carried a 200mm Gauss Rifle and two Optifree ER Medium Lasers. The tank also carried Advanced Tactical Missiles, Streak SRMs, and Heavy Machine Guns, the latter two systems contained in a series of Sponson Turrets on the sides of the tank that gave them a helluva firing profile, whereby they could fire basically from straight forward to straight rear on that side, but not into the far side's area.

_Two Monarch Assault Tanks, real heavy armored suckers that pay for it with minimalistic firepower_, Ninyu was less pleased to see them than he was to see the others. The Monarch actually had more armor than the Badger I, and the Badger I had more than twice the armor of Ninyu's Banshee Damocles. Quite literally speaking, the Monarch could survive several direct hits from a Long Tom Cannon, six front-plate hits of AC/20, and even eight direct hits from a Clan ERPPC to the front armor. The tank paid for it, however: being significantly smaller than the Badger I, it could carry less overall equipment and that extended armor sucked up mass better used for big guns. The Primary weapons of the Monarch were a Gauss Rifle and a Clan ERPPC, though the backups were even more laughable: a trio of ATM-3 launchers. All in all, the Monarch had insane amounts of defensive power and not a lot of fang, in a package that strangely cost half that of the Banshee Damocles that Ninyu was screwing around in.

_Linear Snipers, two of them. Often called Rail Guns on treads. Also have some good secondaries, but those Rail Guns are going to wreak havoc on the enemy if we can find some high-ground to use them on_, Ninyu thinks while trying to come up with a decent idea for that (3). There was always the 88 itself, being built up on an earthen berm that would give them a good field of observation out to the guns' maximum range of 4 kilometers, but that would put the said tanks out of his field of support. One slug of that would put a Strike Dagger on its ass for sure. What it had for secondary weapons really were for only close-range defense, though he supposed a creative crew would load the front-mounted ATM-3 with long-range ordinance to help keep an enemy at bay.

_Vulcan Assault Guns, four of them_. When Ninyu read that, he paused and smiled in his most cold, evil fashion. Vulcan Assault Guns were not simply renown, they were grossly feared by the other five Star Empires back during the Quarter War. A Vulcan carried the largest possible Rotary Assault Cannon and enough ammo to fire it at full fire rate for 100 seconds straight, meaning it put out sixty 222mm Autocannon slugs in a space of 100 seconds, a very nasty feat that could turn several of even the heaviest of Assault 'mechs into piles of roasting scrap. They even had the armor to take the abuse, though when you got down to it they had a problem with the armor on the flanks and rear being slightly less than nominal when stacked against their turret and front armor. The cannon itself was nothing more than a six-barreled rotary edifice that would rotate one barrel per shot, and could hock out all six shots in a full volley in just under ten seconds. Never mind what other weapons it carried. The ER Large Laser was really just decoration, an attention-getter compared to the massive gun it was located coaxially to, and the SRMs were more or less for 'dissuading' Infantry from getting close to it, though they had use against enemy machines as well (if that close and that machine lasted that long).

"Hey, what about putting the Linear Snipers up top on the 88 itself for enfilade?" One of the tankers asks.

"Neg, that would put them out of decent support range. I say put them back about five blocks on Oak so they can just shoot down the road; as they suck the enemy in close, we just hammer them as they approach," Ninyu replies. "If these bastards are punctual, they should be here any minute now," he notes on the open Trinary frequency.

"Yeah, well, here comes our resupply teams," and sure enough a set of CGMM-17G3 Cargomaster Transport rigs were thundering their way. Massive vehicles like few others, each Cargomaster comprised a tractor and up to three trailers. In this case the one that stopped behind Ninyu's star's position had two cargo trailers and the rearguard trailer, the latter carried a 105mm Rotary Assault Cannon and an ATM-9 Launcher that gave it enough firepower to dissuade a casual attacker, but not enough to really harm serious opposition unless used as part of an attack group. The trailers each had an unusual defensive mechanism that could be remotely detonated from the crew cabin up forward, a series of grenade launchers down each side that could be used to deploy shrapnel, smoke, incendiary, or even chaff grenades for disrupting electronics. Other than that, the armor and arms on the Cargomaster were pro forma, not really combat worthy by Magi or Mendel standards.

"Excellent. The more ammo, the merrier it is for us." The Earth Alliance was notorious for not having an efficient fashion by which they could resupply their machines, which meant that their whole assault could go tits up if they bogged down somewhere. Magi forces had learned the hard way to keep themselves well supplied with beans and bullets, as the Negaverse tended to favor units with more energy weapons at the expense of heavy-hitting weapons; Magi preferred a balanced diet of energy and ammo weapons that required cohesive resupply, as well as fire support teams that definitely could use a million c-bills of ammo in less than a day needed copious amounts of ammo.

"Well, sir, where do you want us?" one of the Linear Sniper tanks asks. "Oak and North Sycamore?"

"Aff, that will do nicely," Ninyu says as he considers their minimum and maximum fire ranges for the Rail Guns. "All right, I want the Monarch and Badger tanks on the flanks of the Guardian Missile Carriers, and I want the Vulcans up forward with my star. Giselde, Jun, I want your two stars on the far side of Oak, you will use your long-range combat capability to suck them in to where my star and the Vulcans can hammer them with the absurdly large guns, clear?"

-x-x-x-

(Time ref: 1655 hours)

"All right, people, we're approaching the enemy's theoretical front line. Rika, Belle, I want you three to stop arguing for the duration, ne?"

"Roger that," Rika replies.

"Right, Major," Belle replies.

**CLANG**; one of the members of 2nd Company, a Dagger L, went down hard from some kind of Gauss Rifle shot. The slug had slammed into the torso of his machine and obliterated the main feed from the capacitor, rendering it powerless. The sound had been literally loud enough that she heard it over her suit's external receivers.

"Oh, shit, they know we are here," Rika says as she activates her magnification optics to see where the shot came from. "Pair of very big two-barrel tanks on Oak, ma'am," she says. "They are way outta range for us to hit them," she tacks on after getting a laser range reading. It was moments before they shot again, the four barrels pointed at them was enough of a distraction that they almost did not see the other walls of fire coming at them. LRM and ELRM flights from forces that were firing indirectly on order of those tanks or some invisible asset nearby. "Shields up!" she shouts as she hunkers down behind the shield for her Launcher Dagger L, of which she was also carrying the nominal Dagger L shield and the beam carbine for extended firepower.

"Oh, fucking wonderful," Belle notes a moment before the missiles impacted all throughout where they were moving. Some of the missiles were non-explosive, lending wonder as to what kind of stunt Mendel was pulling; others were standard explosive, and yet others were Magnetic Pulse LRMs that interfered with cockpit and electronic systems. "Damn their butt-fucking fire support forces!" Belle shouts in frustration.

"If they are this thick in long range firepower, no doubt they have significant close-quarters assets up there as well," the Major notes. "All right, people, let's get up closer and personal, see if we can't shake them loose and get 'em running instead of shooting from cover," their CO orders.

"We who are about to die salute thee," Belle notes extremely sarcastically. "Rika, break out that bigass cannon and start shooting it off, no sense wasting time," Belle says as her Aile Dagger surges forward and stomps down with shield set against the incoming Rail Gun slugs.

"God, they have double the range of the Linear Tanks," someone says on Rika's radio net as the slugs slam into either Mobile Suits or buildings.

"And they have double the range of our own support missile fire," someone else notes.

"God, this is a losing war if we've ever fought one," another person declared.

"Win, lose, draw, or fuck, I'm taking a few of them to hell with me," Rika declares coldly. "Even if I have to do it while you pansies cower in fear," she says as she braces her shield forward and slams her jets to blast right and away from the enemy line of direct fire. Her intention was to cross the gap between the forces by way of the buildings they were using as cover for their missile forces, thereby preventing them from drawing a bead on her while she closed up on them.

"Rika, wait up!" Belle half-shouts as her Aile skids to a stop next to the Launcher Dagger L. "If you intend on fucking them, I'm going to take pictures," she notes with an air of finality. Rika's Dagger L shrugged in tune to her own physical reaction to the same as she prepared to jump again.

They had jumped clear of Orchard Road highway, which they knew had been heavily mined due to incoming Earth Alliance forces, and in some places Rika could literally see mines that had been delivered by FASCAM (4) where they had piled up in a small pile on the road surface, they had laid it down that thick. Not that such was obvious, per se, it was more of a case of 'get fucking lost and don't come back' in Mendel parlance, especially if they had the assets available to lay down that many FASCAM mines while still bombarding the hell out of the forces using common, cluster, Flechette, fragmentation, or laser-guided shells.

"So, what are you planning?" Belle asks as she cautiously ducks her Mobile Suit's head around the corner of the nearby commercial building to take a look down the way toward the enemy.

"Go from building to building, hope we can get up close and real personal before their fire support cuts us to shreds," Rika notes. "You lead off, I'll shoot anything that tries flanking us," she notes as another team forms up with the same general plan as hers.

They were moving parallel and south of Oak Street, and the first thing they came to was a multi-level commercial building with an open field directly behind it that was listed for sale, call 847-555-8608 for details. "Looks clear, Rika," Belle notes.

"Move it up to that small factory next," Rika says as the rest of the company finishes forming up on her location. "We need to get closer before we can do anything really useful here," she was stating the obvious as the stress built up on her mind, though everyone thought it was just typical Rika.

**WRAAM**. The commercial building next to her lost more than an eighth from an artillery shell that slammed into it and detonated. "Whose arty was that?" someone asked.

"Does it matter?" The Warrant in charge of 4th Team asks.

"Get moving before they get any closer," Rita says as she ducks around the corner of what was left of the building

The whole company—four teams of three, 12 Mobile Suits total—moved in four wedges toward the factory that Rika had pointed out would be a good staging and cover location. As they moved, they were tracked by artillery shells slamming into their prior location—more than a few of them large enough to have obliterated a Mobile Suit wholesale. "Damn, they can shoot they big guns real well," one of the members of third Team notes.

"Yeah, no shit," Belle replies as she comes to a stop with the factory building between her Mobile Suit and the enemy positions.

"Oh, wow, look at that, about a kilo dead ahead of us is where their missile tracks are sitting," the Major notes.

"All right, You want me to start doing their tanks?" Rika asks as she prepares Agni for the coming battle.

"Yeah, get around here, looks like they have flank support forces, take them out first."

Rika moves around and targets the enemy flank tank, only to find herself staring down the twin barrels and trio of 15-silo Missile Packs on its top turret—and it had two turrets, the second and lower-mounted turret slewing around to where she was standing.

-x-x-x-

(1700 hours)

"Tango is directly on the other side of that factory from you, Star Captain Hrolfsen. I see at least four enemy Mobile Suits, may be moving in company strength, hard to tell from this angle."

"Fire on them and fall back, see if you can suck them out into a crossfire position," by which he meant if they cooperated, he would have them on three different fire angles, his skirmisher star, the heavy tank line, and his own augmented force of four Vulcans and five close-quarters specialists in 'mechs.

"Roger that," Before he could begin his fire run, the enemy had spoke first with an Agni-class hyper-impulse beam cannon. "Jesus H Christ! That sucker just ripped a shitload of armor off my tank!"

"Whoa, that didn't look pretty from over here," one of the Vulcan radio officers notes. "Start firing while falling back, see if you can fool them into thinking you're going to retreat," she tacks on after a moment.

"Guardian line and supporting tanks, fall back while firing. Skirmisher star stand to for flanking action. Linear Snipers, Heavy star prepare to hold the right flank against the rest of the enemy brigades." Ninyu changes radio frequencies. "Galaxy Commander, 4th of Halcyon. Contact with enemy forces, minimum 3 battalions attempting to move through my kill zone with possible reinforcements spotted by my long-range units. Requesting priority on reinforcements," he requests as another Agni beam passes by his location and misses the same Badger I that the pilot had shot at prior. This time, the Badger crew returned the favor with a pair of Ultra Autocannon salvos and a Gauss Rifle slug. On C3, Ninyu watched as a lesser machine, a Dagger L with an Aile Pack, stepped in front of the incoming slugs to take the heat off their fire-support unit.

"Roger that, Star Captain. I have some specialists headed your way from just about every branch available, as well as some 'borrowed help'. ETA 1 minute on the latter, two to three on the former. Hold onto your ass, soldier."

"Roger that," Ninyu replies before deactivating the radio frequency for the Galaxy command level. "CIWS star, hold the line and prepare to hammer them as they come clear."

The falling back of the tanks while firing their missiles and lasers at the nearby (1000 meters) enemies was enough to suck their foolhardy commander out into the open, thinking she was going to pursue their armor and fire support to oblivion and oh, by the way, we just penetrated your line. They did do one thing right, however; rather than trying to loop around the building from its sides like normal foes, the whole enemy Company jumped clear over the factory and almost on top of the force—in fact, one of the Vulcans had the unsettling feeling of being landed on by a Mobile Suit far smaller than it.

"No shit as they come clear, they jumped right in on us!" Someone (likely one of the Vulcan radio officers) shouted.

"Hold this line!" Ninyu shouts before the enemy realized what they had managed to do right. He had the luxury of having a Dagger L drop basically right down in front of him, wearing a Sword Strike pack. Before the pilot could begin to operate right, Ninyu had his crosshairs on target and fired all eight of his Medium Lasers as he hauls back on the throttle. The range was grossly short, less than forty meters, and the enemy pilot did not have the large shield that most of the rest carried. The pilot blocked one of the lasers; the other seven all struck in the torso of the enemy machine, punching through and cutting vital systems (namely, the capacitor) to shreds. Immediately, Ninyu saw the much-vaunted heat spike as his heat sinks began working overtime on the lasers and the Triple-strength Myomer in his 'mech superheated to the point whereby it would really become triple strength.

"Sir, what are you—goddamnit!" A Dagger L with only an Aile pack had basically shoved the barrel of its beam rifle into the chest of Wedge's Atlas and pulled the trigger, with about the same damage effect as a Clan ERPPC from one of their machines. "Eat me, maggot!" The Atlas picked the far smaller Dagger L up with both hands and quite literally threw it fifteen meters into the wall of the factory, by which the impact destroyed the Aile pack and gave the pilot one helluva rude shock, not to mention burying the said Mobile Suit halfway into the building in question.

**CRACK CRACK CRACK**; pause of two seconds; **CRACK CRACK CRACK**. One of the Vulcans had a solid solution on first one, then another Dagger L, so he gave three slugs apiece. The monster cannon did indeed tear chunks off the enemy machines, the first one lost an arm and most of its left torso in two, the second machine lost its left leg and head from the incoming slugs. The slugs had transited close enough to Ninyu's Banshee that they had slightly buffeted his left arm, but that was nothing new to him; he had been in worse firestorms and kept a steady aim before.

"Close up! Don't allow them to bring long-range guns to bear!" Ninyu orders as he suits actions to words, closing on a pair of Jet Daggers that were trying to maneuver on him with Beam Sabers. His system was now in 'superhot' mode, by which the Myomers were so well heated that they were now truly triple strength and phenomenally effective, to the point of making the Atlas lock weak. And maintaining that heat level was a cinch so long as he kept moving and shooting. The moving and shooting part was easy enough for him; the farther of the two Jet machines had jumped backwards and clear of him, firing his beam rifle almost erratically, and to this he countered with six of his array of ER Medium Lasers and the Gauss Rifle while moving forward at a walk pace to the other machine that had drawn a beam saber and set his (or her) shield. Of six lasers fired in ripple, only four of them hit as the enemy maneuvered, plus the gauss rifle, which put the enemy machine on the ground and into a column of trees; five seconds later, the pilot blew the cockpit open with the 'mommy' handle (5) and was out, running toward 'friendly' lines. Of the nearby enemy, Ninyu needed only grab the enemy's wrist as he (or she) swung in with the beam saber, then he brought the Dragon Slayer hatchet around and into the torso of the enemy machine. Razor-sharpened, depleted uranium with a tungsten cap and reinforced edge, the average hatchet is capable of causing severe damage to anything it hits, even to the point of being more effective in close quarters than the average Mobile Suit beam saber on some larger Battlemechs. With one stroke and the TSM active, Ninyu managed to chop down through the shoulder, through the torso and all the way down to the hip in one stroke, almost completely cutting the Dagger L in half, Jet Striker Pack and all. The defeated machine would not give up his hatchet, however, so he ended up having to kick the enemy off his blade, which was a rather macabre sight for the enemy.

"Holy shit, sir, we scared 'em off!" Ninyu's 'greenest' subordinate notes as they had indeed jumped backwards over the factory, being chased by various fire from the Skirmisher Star and his own forces.

"Ah," Ninyu replies with a dissatisfied grunt. He figured he could have done far more if he had gotten into the swing of things properly. "Damage report, all persons," he orders after a few moments.

"Two, paint scratches, nothing major."

"Three, two hits from a beam rifle in my left chest, nothing severe."

"Four, I took an anti-armor penetrator in the arm but I'll live."

"Five, not a thing."

"Vulcan One, no damage."

"Vulcan Two, minor damage to my turret when I got stomped on," the radio officer sounded rather testy about that.

"Vulcan Three, no damage."

"Vulcan four, I took a pair of missiles from a Launcher Pack and some gun ammo from the same, nothing severe."

"Heavy Star reporting, we're holding north of Oak at this time, looks like we got a shitload and change bearing down on us, boss man," Jun says. "Requesting backup at this time."

"Backup is in route. I'm calling for all the damned available air support I can get my hands on right now, Star Commander. Hold your ground unless you absolutely must move."

"Aff, Star Captain," Jun replies.

"Skirmisher star, your status?"

"Bad joss, boss man, I'm staring at almost a frigging Regiment coming down the pipe at us right the hell now, sir," Giselde replies after a pause of about four seconds. "I need help and I need it right the hell now, sir."

"It just arrived," an older, local voice declares on their subnet.

"Holy shit, Dom Tropens on beefcake, man," someone says as Ninyu looks his battlemech at them himself. "They fuckin' the enemy up by the numbers," the same guy says.

"What the hell are those things?" Giselde asks. "Their styling looks almost ZAFT. Where do I get one?"

"Oh shit, incoming enemy air!"

"Take some shots at them, people," Ninyu orders rather calmly for someone staring down the mad-end of an Aile Skygrasper. He steps back from the factory building and elevates his torso aimpoint while activating the targeting computer in his 'mech to track them better. The fighters were coming in mid-altitude and fast, intent on making a high-speed attack pass and clearing out before return fire could zero them in. The only problem with that thought was that they were not shooting at one line, they were shooting past three, and the Guardian Missile Carriers were also rated for anti-air work with their volleys of missiles, which they started before anyone else did.

Within ten seconds, over ten tons of projectiles and explosives as well as countless lasers and beams traded sides from both directions. More than a percentage of the enemy took at least some damage; on the older Skygraspers some damage was usually enough to knock them out of the sky. Many of them were even turned into flying fireballs by expedient of flying through a cloud of missiles from the Guardians, whose fire support options were limited at the time due to no real spotting ability from the forward forces at the time.

In short, nobody walked away unscathed from that strike, friend or foe.

"Everyone fall back, fighting withdrawal, right now," Ninyu orders coldly, obviously pissed off he had to give up his preferred battle position. "We'll reform a battle line on the Guardians at Harmony Court. We're too far forward to properly defend at this time." Ninyu switches radio frequencies. "Attention Air Marshall, this is Ninyu Hrolfsen, Star Captain, 4th of Halcyon Cluster, Orbital Galaxy. Requesting priority air support at this time, over."

"Star Captain Hrolfsen, this is Air Marshall West. Roger your call for priority air support, we have a star of Fireballs coming in from the lake skirmish as well as dedicated ground support assets. Stand by for support, over," the Air Marshall replies. Something of her voice reminded Ninyu of his dead girlfriend, not something he wanted to feel in the middle of a fighting withdrawal.

"Damn, their air support is good shit, man," one of the Guardian RIO officers says. "They smoked what was left of our left-flank Badger, the crew just finished bailing out," he tacks on.

"Damn," Ninyu replies. He was surveying his Battlemechs, and the damage was adding up to a sum greater than what he wanted it to be, and greater than he had estimated their fighter strength at. "Pussies they certainly are not, comrades, be they ground or air."

"Yeah, well, when they come back, I intend on bending them over and ram-fucking them with my Atlas."

"Fret not, we will get that chance, today or tomorrow." Ninyu replies calmly, despite the three beam hits he took and the pelting from missiles and cannon he was still ready to get up close and personal with that Dagger team again.

-x-x-x-

(Time stamp: 1710 hours)

"Why the fuck are we standing around here, Rika? We should get back, form up with the rest of the Battalion, and drive in on them!"

"Stop whining, Belle, I'm thinking. Now, we know when we got close, they cut us to shreds, so we'll hold our distance and shoot from range."

"And you're the only one of us with a decent long range cannon, Rika."

"Shut up and use your Beam Rifle like you know where your ass is."

"That made no sense at all," Belle grumps as she kicks a hole in the wall of the factory so she could use it as a step to climb partway up the factory wall and look over the roof at the enemy line. "Oh, wow, now would be a good time to attack, Rika, looks like they're falling back and shooting at the planes."

"What else are they doing?" Rika asks as she takes tally of their odds. They only had five of the Company left, and the Major had died in a rather messy fashion as her Dagger L took a cannon slug to the cockpit. Hers was primarily a maneuver company, in fact Rika was the only one with a weapon more powerful than the standard beam rifle, everyone else had Aile packs or Jet Packs, except for one surviving Sword Pack.

"They have three modified Dom types and a star of medium-heavy 'mechs north of Oak, fighting off our left flank looks like. May be another star of heavier machines up there as well. As to their big tanks, they seem to have formed a line at...oh, shit, incoming enemy air!" her Aile Dagger drops down and covers against the side of the building from which they would be coming in.

The enemy was not using strafing runs or precision fighter weapons strikes, they were dropping bombs. Lots of bombs. In fact, when Rika stopped to think about it, she wondered how the hell the Fireballs could carry that many bombs, until she realized that they were likely just 500-pounders or cluster bombs. Even still, a quarter-ton bomb was more than capable of severely screwing up a Dagger L or even a Windam, as their attack run did.

"Good God above us all, I've never seen a whole battalion blown clear off the map by just a fighter strike," Belle notes as her Dagger L stands up again.

"Hell, one Battalion, Belle? Try two and change," Rika replies crassly as her system automatically tallies up the casualties. Over eighty Daggers had been shredded in one level or another, at the enemy cost of two of their vaunted (and very expensive) Fireballs and damage to the rest from beam shots that were still following them. "God, they definitely ain't pussies, ground or air."

"Yeah, will why don't they drive those things back here so I can bend them over and ram-fuck them with my Schewert Gewehr," Mitch, the pilot of the Sword Dagger L, notes coldly.

"I agree, I'd like to give them an enema with my Agni, but we have better fish to fry right now," Rika notes. "Oooohhh! I'm starting to get **really** frustrated! Why can't these dipshits just go home and leave us the fuck alone?"

"Some of them will be going home. Not that it really matters," Belle notes.

"Huh?"

"Incoming, round two," Belle notes as she hunkers down again, this time with her shield facing toward the enemy. She was watching as the enemy machine that looked about four times larger than a Skygrasper though with a proportional silhouette came in, and she even saw the four Hyper-impulse beams and two ER Large Lasers. She cringed, and missed the rest. This time, the enemy was using a precision strike with a whole lot of beam weapons and did not have the hit-miss issues that the Earth Alliance did. The fire came in on target and ripped one of the Jet Dagger L machines apart, though the hyper-impulse beams struck on their Sword Dagger L, one of the beams transiting Mitch's cockpit. Without a doubt, he was dead.

"Jesus! Mitch! No way!" Belle shouts at her screens as his Dagger L goes down.

Rika was closest to his fallen machine; she reached down and picked up the Schwert Gewehr. "I'll ram-fuck them for you, Mitch. See you in hell someday." Her Dagger L looks up. "C'mon, break's over."

"We're gonna charge them down, right?"

"I don't see any real reason to be nice about it," one of the Jet Dagger pilots says. "Follow me in, Rika, and spam that Agni the whole way."

"All right, all right, I'll do it," Belle says more to steel herself for the charge than else. "Mitch was everyone's friend. Those bastards have to pay."

"They pay for invading our planet and killing our friends and family," Rika says. "Let's do it. Jets lead off, Belle cover my right while we close."

"Roger that."

"Follow me in!" one of the Jet pilots says as he leads off around the corner and immediately hammers his jet pack to thrust forward five hundred meters in five seconds. The other Jets were half a second behind, then Belle, then Rika, the latter only jetting partway to stop and begin firing Agni as she charged them down.

Firing between the four other machines, Rika was able to track in on the enemy heaviest battlemech, the one that had picked up an Aile Dagger and thrown it into the side of a building. She fired, fired again; the first blew a serious chunk out of its torso and caused some form of violent ammo explosion that set the house behind it immediately ablaze. The second clipped the thigh of its right leg and damaged it almost completely through the structure. It was moments later that Belle managed to clip that same wound with a beam from her carbine and put the enemy down on the ground.

One of the enemy made its presence clearly known, first by blowing down a Dagger L's shield by expedient of one Gauss Rifle shot that tore it clear off the arm mounting. That accomplished, Rika was curtly reminded of what she had seen and shoved out of her mind in the first few moments of that abortive close-quarters scuffle: that thing had eight Medium Lasers and the pilot did not miss what he was aiming at. The same dagger took seven of the eight, spread across its left arm and chest in a hellish barrage that put it down on the ground, unmoving again.

_There, that's the one I'll drag to hell with me_, Rika thinks crassly as she changes her orientation and begins charging it down in twenty-meter gulps. While approaching she continued firing on the other enemy machines, her power indication steadily creeping toward drained as she indeed 'spammed' Agni as often as her crosshairs traversed an enemy machine. In so doing, she managed to slag down a Summoner Omnimech, a common machine among the Mendel forces for its flexibility and mobility, and caused serious damage to a machine she had never seen nor been briefed on. As she closed to combat range with the enemy machine that had already taken down five of her comrades, it fired on her with only six of the lasers and the Gauss Rifle, the net damage being all to her machine's left side and away from the arm with the Schwert Gewehr, just as she wanted. Despite having the left arm of her Mobile Suit fall off, she continued the charge without hesitation. "If I'm going to join my father in death, I'm bringing as many of you with me to hell as possible!" she shouts on an open radio channel.

"Cute, kid," someone replies to her shout on the same channel; to her, it sounded like an older guy that had no real concern for anything (ergo, a cold bastard). The enemy machine that she was targeting had buried its hatchet-sword-something two-thirds the way down a Dagger machine even as it continued walking at her. Rika got the fright of her life as she realized something two seconds too late: the tanks that she had more or less discounted had basically shredded all four limbs, the head, and three big chunks out of Belle's Dagger L, followed shortly by the Missile tracks tearing apart the last Jet Dagger with laser and short-range missile fire. "I will deal with the last."

"Watch your ass, Star Captain, she's pissed off."

They continued to close; Rika saw for a moment the lasers before they fired, and hammered her jets just in time to dodge half of them; the others blew through her left leg and almost caused it to buckle under her Suit's weight. Since she could not walk it properly, she fired her jets to dynamically close the last two hundred meters with the enemy Battlemech, and hopefully impale it on her Schwert Gewehr.

It worked, sort of. The enemy was not caught unawares; she ended up with the enemy's arm stuck into her machine up to the elbow, though the Schwert Gewehr had gone low in transit and impaled the enemy 'mech in the hip, clean through the machine and out its arse. The fist had destroyed something important, though, as her machine depowered after three seconds.

Rika had reached up to the mommy handle and yanked it, blowing the cockpit open and releasing the emergency rope for her to climb out. "Well, ain't this just a bitch. I go about fisting the enemy and get it stuck in the tango," the enemy Battlemech pilot says as she could hear the machine straining to pull its arm clear. She was just stepping out of the machine to rope to the ground when she was thrown back into her chair violently by some kind of explosion on the far side of the enemy 'mech; a moment prior, she thought she had seen some kind pof hyper-impulse beam strike the machine's back. "Damnit! My engine's gone, I'm ejecting!" the pilot shouts as she heard the most satisfying sound she ever did, the sound of a battlemech cockpit ejecting from the machine to which it was attached.

It was rather prescient that she had been thrown back into the cockpit, for both machines began falling down to the ground, and for Rika it had to be the longest sinking sensation she had ever felt, until the hard-ass impact that bruised her ribs on part of the right-hand console. When the machines finally finished settling, she was laying on her side on the left cockpit monitors with the throttle stick digging into her left hip quite painfully. It took her several seconds to unhook her leg from the throttle and stand up in a cockpit that was physically sideways, but with that accomplished she kicked the unsealed hatch open and wormed her way out into the fading sunlight.

It was a glorious sight. She stood up and was able to watch the fruit of her labor, the ejection pod from the enemy machine as it drifted to the ground lazily. Rika pulled her pistol out of its holster and drew the slide back, figuring that using the side of her downed Mobile Suit would give her good cover and a good bench to which she could shoot him as he left the pod. As soon as it touched ground, the enemy pilot kicked open the hatch on the cylindrical pod and stepped out, looking around at his environs in something of a daze, before he reached back inside and pulled out something from his pod; it turned out to be a backpack that was likely loaded with survival goods or personal effects or both.

Rika estimated the range at twenty meters and aimed just slightly over his head. Before he could begin to move, she squeezed her first round off.

It was not fast enough. The pilot had ducked back into the pod at the last moment to grab something, and her finger had already begun the trek rearward to fire the gun. The shot missed his head by no more than a centimeter, though that shot may as well have been in the next time zone; everyone around her now knew her purpose and her location, and none of those so informed were friendlies. She decided to fire as fast as she could get it back on target, in hopes of taking at least one with her.

**Crack Crack Crack Crack**, the shots were close or on the ejection pod twenty meters away, but the pilot had ducked completely back inside to conceal from the incoming ordinance. She played a hunch for a moment and targeted the side of the pod where he might be standing inside, and fired several shots; all hit, but none appeared to penetrate.

The sound that came to her mind after that sounded like nothing short of a tearing sound, and she could tell the shooter was the 'mechwarrior. He had fired some form of sub-machinegun at her from inside the pod, and the rounds came fairly close to her, enough so that she could see the slugs had pocked the armor plate of her Dagger she was hiding behind. (6)

"Jesus, they equip their 'mechwarriors with sub-machineguns that can blow little craters in armor plate? What the fuck crazy are these guys?" Rika asks as she aims over the armor plate again and begins firing to suppress him. After a few moments, another volley comes her way, some of them kicking up spall from the edge of the plate. She hesitated for him to fire another volley, which he obliged with another ten-round burst that again tore more of that one armor plate up and really scared the piss out of her. Rika had little doubt that being hit by even one of those rounds would shred her severely.

She clamored back up and put her sights on target, which definitely was not an ejection pod. She just barely managed to duck back below the plate before the enemy Armored Infantry officer fired a far larger machine gun mounted on his left shoulder at her position, this one really scaring her as the rounds caused the plate next to her head to buckle with each impact.

**WHAM**. The sound was of a heavy object striking the frame of her downed Dagger; when she looked to the source, she had but a bare moment to see as another Armored Infantry Officer had jumped onto her Mobile Suit's leg and then jumped again, this time intending on landing near or on her, and in the right hand of this trooper was a lit beam saber.

Rika had no clue what happened in the impact, though she vaguely remembered seeing the Saber come down and chop the front half of her pistol off. Rika fell backwards as the trooper tossed aside the beam saber, and Rika had yet another hellish lesson in Mendel combat technology as from under the forearm of this trooper sprang a half-meter-long blade called a Heat Knife or Army Knife, which he reared back to stab through her head.

Rika's last thought was of seeing such hatred in the eyes of the trooper that was barely a mater away from her, blade set to impale her head.

She knew she had lost.

- - - - -

The scream Ninyu heard from the far side of the Dagger's arm was more than ample to turn his stomach. Instantly it reminded him of the scream he heard from his girlfriend as she became casualty on Galdesse to someone else's hatred. He could naught but look away before the killing blow was struck.

"You rat bastards! You killed someone after disarming her!"

"And you fucks just kill unarmed civilians, so why should we show you any solicitude if you're going to act this stupid, bitch?" One of the Marines replies to the pilot of the Aile Dagger L.

"But—" She chokes as Ninyu was watching her.

"Ah, so he didn't kill her," the Marine Point Commander notes. Ninyu's head immediately whipped around to the Dagger L, and sure enough the Marine had picked her up by the front of hr uniform shirt (and probably her bra as well) and jumped clear of the wreck to land within five meters of the other Marines. "Why did you stop, hard-ass?"

"And deprive the Star Captain of his isorla? Not hardly, this guy is just plain scary," he indicates the Star Captain. "Yours, sir," he says as he roughly tosses her the several meters to where she lands and rolls to a stop practically at his feet.

"Cute, kid," Ninyu replies tersely. "You have a deathwish or something?"

"Damn," is all that she replied.

"Well, kid, 'Damn' may make a good rejoinder, but it did not answer the question. So I'll be a little more direct: what the hell were you thinking when you took potshots at an ejected 'Mechwarrior in plain sight to a dozen super-heavy tanks?" Ninyu was pointing at the closest of the Vulcan tanks that was now surveying the scene with its machine gun pintle mounts manned and armed.

"I want you dead, all of you. You killed my father, my only remaining family. I want revenge."

"Yeah yeah, been there, said that, still not impressed. Stick her in the cooler for a week, guys, see if she grows a brain between now and then." By which he meant to throw her in a brig for now.

"Well, we lived," the first prisoner notes to the second.

"I didn't want to live. I wanted company in hell when I got there."

"By the gods, doesn't that just make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, Star Captain?" The Point Commander asks.

"Yeah, you have to wonder what this planet is worth if all the locals can do is hate." He snorts. "Fuck 'em, I say. We'll win, we'll beat some sense into them, and in several eons we'll shit-kick the Eternal Darkness around the south side of Existence. In ten years, Blue Cosmos will not exist as we know it. Still ain't what I want to be doing, though, but it will have to do."

_That kid could be a classic ristar if she wasn't so dead-set on her hatred_, Ninyu thinks as he watches two of the Marines escort the captured toward the staging grounds in North Aurora.

"Want a ride back into staging, sir?"

"Neg, I'll take up with one of the tanks, I still have most of my unit to command. Can someone find me a spare 'mech to continue kicking ass with?"

* * *

Author's Chapter Afterword: 

Fast and brutal action, though nowhere near fast in the writing. I've had so much going on with other stories and the rest of my life that some of my works have fallen by the wayside. I swear a rede (oath) here: I start it, I will finish it. This I swear to. (In reality, I have been working on this off and on while writing other fics, including some material for other side stories and for time down the Jokers Wild timeline).

Note clearly the confluence of multiple different groups of personnel fighting at once, the armor, battlemechs, aerofighters, infantry, artillery, and support personnel. Magi and Mendel forces are masters of combined arms operations, since the battlefields of the Star Empire Wars demanded that kind of force and technique. When applied to the Earth Alliance devaluation of conventional forces and bias for Mobile Weapons, the results can be predictably bloody since they are not as flexible and multi-capable as their foes. This is one of the great failings of the Earth Alliance in my opinion, that they are really unwilling to play all the cards available, instead relying on just one facet of their armed forces to do the dirty work. Aube does a much better job in that respect than the Atlantic Federation.

Thank you to Drakensis for the Banshee Damocles and the pilot, Ninyu Hrolfsen. Ninyu is going to factor into more of Mendel's antics at a later time, I think I can do some good with someone like him. If any of you reading have your own design and dynamic you want to see scrapping it in Chicago (or anywhere else in Mendel's battlefields), send them my way and I'll kick some ass with them.

Next Up: The book is thrown at the Chicago OZ once again, this time from an unexpected direction. Can Mendel hold onto it?

* * *

Footnotes: 

(1): Sorry, point 1 never existed. I don't know where the hell it went :P

(2): ELRM Stands for Extended Long Range Missile. These things have an absurdly long range that most Battletech games don't involve enough maps for the average gunfight to take advantage of that maximum range, much less the missile launcher's theoretical Extreme range. They also have one helluva minimum range that is a lot less convenient than the maximum range, trust me.

(3): Rail Gun is a custom weapon I designed. A Rail Gun uses the same ammo as the Gauss Rifle, but is a far larger gun that has far longer ranges. There are three sizes of Rail Gun: Light Rail Gun, Rail Gun, and Heavy Rail Gun. The only difference between them is the range brackets, physical size of the gun, and heat output.

(4): FASCAM: Field Artillery SCAtterable Minefield. Just as the name implies, it is a minefield that is delivered to a remote location by artillery missile or shell. There is a similar version to this for LRM launchers, called Thunder LRMs, though those are usually deployed only by dedicated fire-support forces. There are also scads of different variants of minefileds that can be delivered by FASCAM or Thunder, some of which I may use in later chapters (Capellan solutions, anyone?)

(5): 'Mommy' Handle is the common name for the Cockpit Hatch Jettison handle, the handle that blows the explosives bolts on the cockpit that allows a pilot to escape a downed machine. Battlemechs have a similar system that varies from 'mech to 'mech.

(6): This is the Rorynex RM3 Sub-machinegun in action, a weapon that fires a small-caliber explosive round and is banned on many worlds in the Inner Sphere, but not in the Mendel or Magi Empires. Actually the original Mechwarrior 3rd Edition version isn't this powerful, but with advances in materials sciences this gun would gain striking power from better explosives in the ammunition, at least the version used by Mendel.

* * *

Murphy's Laws applicable to this section:

(Both): Tracers work both ways.

(Both): You think the enemy has better artillery support and the enemy thinks yours is better; you're both right.

* * *

Battlemech TROs: 

**Type/Model**: Banshee Damocles BNC-8E

**Tech: **Mixed Tech / 3050

**Config: **Biped BattleMech

**Rules: **Level 3, Standard design

**Mass: **95 tons

**Chassis: **Foundation 210CES Endo Steel Endo Steel (C)

**Power Plant: **380 Edasich Motors XL Fusion (C)

**Walking Speed: **43.2 km/h

**Maximum Speed: **64.8 [86.4 km/h

**Jump Jets: **None

**Jump Capacity: **0 meters

**Armor Type: **Longanecker PlastiSteel Adv. Composite R5 Standard

**Armament:**  
8 PhoTec Extended ER Medium Lasers(C)  
1 Gauss Rifle(C)

**Manufacturer: ** Defiance Industries **  
Location: ** Hesperus (Original)**  
Communications System: ** Angst Clear Channel 3 **  
Targeting & Tracking System:**Angst Clear View 2A

**Overview:**

The BNC-8E Banshee Damocles is rebuild of a rebuild of a rebuild, if you will. The end product of that rebuild and intrigue is enough to challenge any other 'mech in severe close quarters battle.

In a perverse game of one-upmanship between the Negaverse and Illyaris Empires, both of which had long favored the Banshee for its maneuverability and brutal close-quarters detail, the Banshee received more than a few upgrades at the expense of the other side's research and espionage capabilities. The Negaverse started by rebuilding the 5-E variant with Clan technology, making it far more lethal in battle. The Illyaris, not wanting to be outdone, reconfigured its weapons to have less long-range punch by dropping the two ERPPCs for a battery of four Medium Pulse Lasers and extra heatsinks as well as full armor.

The status quo between the Negaverse and Illyaris lasted for over 500 years before the Negaverse unveiled their bastard mutant child of the Banshee, the Damocles, which completely rebuilt the internal weapons and equipment configuration to be supreme in close quarters. It is built on the same frame as the Negaverse 5-E variant, but rather than having multiple weapons systems, it maintains only three: a Gauss Rifle, eight ER Medium Lasers from the PhoTec Extended line, and a hatchet. The close-quarters capabilities of this design are made all that much worse by the fact that this unit equips a rather rare technology for Negaverse machines, the Triple-Strength Myomer. The ranged weapons are slaved to a Targeting Computer, the Gauss Rifle was maintained from the 5E variant, and all the hip-mount weapons were replaced with two clusters of four ER Medium Lasers on each side of the hips. The Hatchet, mounted to the right arm, is built of a high-density rhenium composite capped with a gundanium blade, shaped as a classic Dragon Slayer sword that is actually more menacing and damaging than the Beam Sabers it was designed to circumvent.

**Capabilities:**

The Damocles has been known, since inception, as a brutal infighter and urban warfare specialist that has few rivals anywhere on the chosen battlefields, but outside its element this machine can be hopelessly outclassed with the right tactics.

Damocles had been designed for the purpose of challenging the Illyaris mech forces inside city battles and limiting terrain, where it could close quickly while overheated and tear through an enemy machine with hatchet blows and punches to go through most standard armor. Ironically, the Illyaris tactic of equipping their machines with hands with strap-on and salvaged beam sabers is of little effect against the Damocles, which can simply cleave the offending arm off in one swing...a swing that usually caused more damage than just to the arm. These machines are reknown for punching through the side torso of lighter mobile suits or medium 'mechs, and for punching through the center torso of smaller 'mechs.

Damocles pilots are also known for using a variant of the 'Madcat Jive' when overheated and of equivalent speed to a Timber Wolf, whereby they would walk back and forth in the same area to prevent an enemy from hitting them while maintaining position and being able to fire on nearby enemies with their weapons. This has the downside, however, of making their movements predictable to enemy artillery and support forces, something that more than one Damocles pilot has fallen afoul of.

**Battle History:**

The Damocles suffers a rather bipolar battle record. While used in limiting or urban terrain, where close quarters is expected if not given, it has a fearsome reputation that is hard to match or excel. When used improperly, in open terrain where it can be seen at range, this assault mech is rather brutally assaulted at range, along with other close quarters fire-magnets like the Hunchback, Atlas, or Treechopper. Outside of its Gauss Rifle, this machine has zero capability to defend itself beyond range of its ER Medium Lasers, and just about everyone knows this well.

Strangely enough, though this machine was designed as a counter to the Illyaris, it has found a very welcome niche against the hated enemy of the Negaverse: the Multimages. As Magi are not afraid to wager close quarters battles in pursuit of their overall objectives, this machine has become known as the 'Treechopper Slayer' and 'Mage Masher' as much as it has been known as Damocles. Against the Magi, where it has seen the most action of all, the Damocles has an absolutely polarized battle record: either it does exceptionally well in close quarters, often the rival of four or five enemy assault machines, or it does incredibly poorly against ranged forces, to the point of comical ineffectiveness.

To point, this machine is also one of the few mass-production Battlemechs capable of challenging a close-quarters Gundam, such as X Divider, Epyon, Deathscythe, or Zephyranthes. Whereas other machines may be more durable or have harder-hitting range weapons, the sole focus of the Damocles gives it incredible striking power against even a Gundam, most of which weigh less than the Damocles and have far less armor, though of tougher composites. The one catch is that it suffers the same limitations against Gundams as against Battlemechs: it excels in close quarters, it falls flat when caught at range.

**Variants:**

Though the Damocles itself is a variant, there are no known variants of the Damocles, strangely enough. Most customizations seen on the battlefield are cosmetic and aesthetic and have less to do with combat capabilities as they do with appearance.

**Notable 'Mechs & MechWarriors:**

James 'Jimmy' Dean (machine: The Meat Grinder)  
James and his 'mech, named by his lancemates as a play on his name, gained a reputation during the Quarter War for brutality and flexibility. Jimmy's ability to use the ER Medium Lasers with speed and precision allowed him to hit moving targets that other warriors would not have even tried to target at ranges beyond the normal targeting envelope for the lasers; tales abound of this warrior shooting at and hitting 'mechs at the same range those mechs were firing their LRM launchers and Large Lasers at him. It is said that his demise came about only as a result of him taking on a special action group of the Magi, armed with several of the best Gundams available during the Quarter War, though in the end he still managed to take down two of their ranks before he was felled. His Banshee Damocles was known to be painted in midnight blue with white trim and highlights, a large yellow smiley face over the skull faceplate, and a stylized Jimmy Dean logo down the Slayer Hatchet.

Red Adernes (machine: Big Red) (AKA 'Regicide' Red)  
Red is one of a handful of Star League Executors that frequently uses Battlemech or Mobile Suits to accomplish a job that others would complete in infantry or mage action instead. When he needs a combination of close-quarters hitting power and armor more than speed or long-range firepower, Red Adernes drives a Banshee Damocles that is painted Cardinal Red as his other units and devices, with a chromed and anti-beam-coated Slayer Hatchet.

Ninyu Hrolfsen (machine: The Steamroller)  
A renown pilot of more recent and disturbing action, Ninyu built his reputation on the planet Galdesse as an expert close-quarters slayer of Mobile Dolls. His Banshee Damocles was one of a handful of machines that escaped a dying Dropship as it plummeted toward the planet, shot down by Mobile Dolls in high-atmosphere combat. It is said that his long-time girlfriend died on the ship, one of many killed in that abortive landing operation. He went on to battle the Mobile Dolls all along the southern continent of Galdesse, racking up over a hundred kills on his own and twice that in tag-team kills with others in his scratch-up unit on the forest planet. Ninyu's personal Banshee Damocles is painted the Magi standard matte gray with black trim, has the skull faceplate painted in bone white, and the Slayer Hatchet is painted black with intricate pin-striping down the center of the blade. His present whereabouts are unknown; rumors traded on Galdesse speak of him and his Battlemech being recruited for some special operation by a mysterious lady with a lot of influence...

**Deployment**

Presently, the Banshee Damocles is manufactured by two Star Empires: The Negaverse, the original manufacturers, and the Multimages, who captured several of the production facilities during Operation Thunderbolt. The Magi have made no modifications to the version they produce, given that it has a stellar combat record to begin with and requires no major changes to maintain its close-quarters edge. These two forces will typically use this machine as the centerpiece of an assault advance in close-quarters or limiting terrain, as its defensive use is rather limited unless the battlefield itself can be limited.

Type/Model: Banshee Damocles BNC-8E 

**Mass:**

95 tons

**Equipment:**  
Crits, Mass

**Internal Structure:**  
145 pts Endo Steel (C)  
7, 5.00 (Endo Steel Loc: 5 LA, 1 RT, 1 RL)

**Engine:**  
380 XL  
10, 20.50

**Walking MP: **4 (5)

**Running MP: **6 (8)

**Jumping MP: **0

**Heat Sinks:**  
17 Double (C) (34)  
4, 7.00 (Heat Sink Loc: 2 RT)

**Compact Gyro:**  
2, 6.00

**Cockpit, Life Support:**  
5, 3.00

**Triple Strength Myomer (IS):**  
6, .00

**Actuators:  
**L: Sh UA LA H,  
R: Sh UA LA H  
16, .00

**Armor Factor:**  
0, 18.50

* * *

Internal Structure, Armor Value 

**Head:** 3, 9

**Center Torso: **30, 45

**Center Torso (Rear): **(0), 15

**L/R Side Torso: **20, 30/30

**L/R Side Torso (Rear):** (0), 10/10

**L/R Arm: **16, 32/32

**L/R Leg: **20, 40/40

* * *

Weapons & Equipment: 

Loc, Heat, Ammo  
Crits, Mass

4 ER Medium Lasers (C)  
RT, 20, (n/a)  
4, 4.00

1 Gauss Rifle (C)  
LT, 1, 16  
8, 14.00 (Ammo Loc: 2 LL)

4 ER Medium Lasers (C)  
LT, 20, (n/a)  
4, 4.00

1 Targeting Computer (C)  
CT, (n/a), (n/a)  
4, 4.00

1 Hatchet:  
RA, (n/a), (n/a)  
7, 7.00

**TOTALS:**

Heat: 41

**Crits: 77**

**Tonnage: 95.00**

**Crits & Tons Left:**  
1, .00

* * *

Calculated Factors: 

**Total Cost: **31,377,191 C-Bills

**Battle Value: **2,742

**Cost per BV: **11,443.18

**Weapon Value: **8,555 / 8,555 (Ratio 3.12 / 3.12)

**Damage Factors: **SRDmg 59; MRDmg 42; LRDmg 13

**BattleForce2: MP:** 4, **Armor/Structure:** 7/5

**Damage PB/M/L:** 10/7/1, **Overheat:** 1

**Class:** MA, **Point Value:** 27

* * *

**Type/Model: **Black Wizard BLK-WZD-6SC 

**Tech: **Mixed Tech / 3067

**Config: **Biped BattleMech

**Rules: **Level 3, Standard design

**Mass: **75 tons

**Chassis: **Standard (C)

**Power Plant: **300 XL Fusion (C)

**Walking Speed: **43.2 km/h

**Maximum Speed: **64.8 km/h

**Jump Jets: **None

**Jump Capacity: **0 meters

**Armor Type: **Standard

**Armament:**  
10 SRM 6s(C)  
1 Improved C³ CPU (IS)  
1 ER Medium Laser(C)

**Manufacturer: ** (Unknown) **  
Location: ** (Unknown) **  
Communications System: ** (Unknown)  
**Targeting & Tracking System:**(Unknown)

**Overview:**

Included as reference of another machine in Ninyu's Star. Yes, you are reading this right: ten SRM-6s. I have won more than a few matches with this one, and lost more than a few matches when caught in open fields :P

Note that I have not thus yet filled out the manufacturer info for this chassis. Sorry, will update when I get off my Lazy and do so.

* * *

Type/Model: Black Wizard BLK-WZD-6SC 

**Mass: **75 tons

Equipment:  
Crits, Mass

**Internal Structure:**  
114 pts Standard (C)  
0, 7.50

**Engine:**  
300 XL  
10, 9.50

**Walking MP: **4

**Running MP: **6

**Jumping MP: **0

**Heat Sinks:**  
22 Double (C) (44)  
20, 12.00 (Heat Sink Loc: 4 LA, 4 RA, 1 LL, 1 RL)

**Gyro:**  
4, 3.00

**Cockpit, Life Support, Sensors:**  
5, 3.00

**Actuators:**  
L: Sh UA LA H,  
R: Sh UA LA H  
16, .00

**Armor Factor:**  
0, 14.50

* * *

Internal Structure, Armor Value 

**Head: **3, 9

**Center Torso: **23, 34

**Center Torso (Rear): **(0), 12

**L/R Side Torso: **16, 25/25

**L/R Side Torso (Rear): **(0), 7/7

**L/R Arm: **12, 24/24

**L/R Leg: **16, 32/32

* * *

Weapons & Equipment:  
Loc, Heat, Ammo  
Crits, Mass 

5 SRM 6s (C)  
RT, 20, 45  
11, 10.50 (Ammo Loc: 3 RT)

5 SRM 6s (C)  
LT, 20, 45  
5, 10.50 (Ammo Loc: 3 LT)

1 Improved C³ CPU (IS)  
CT, 0, (0)  
2, 2.50

1 ER Medium Laser (C)  
HD, 5, (0)  
1, 1.00

CASE II Equipment (C):  
2, 1.00(CASE II Loc: 1 LT, 1 RT)

**TOTALS:**

Heat: 45

**Crits: 76**

**Tonnage: 75.00**

**Crits & Tons Left:**  
2, .00

* * *

Calculated Factors: 

**Total Cost: **17,475,500 C-Bills

**Battle Value: **1,583 ( 244 for C³)

**Cost per BV: **11,039.48

**Weapon Value: **3,928 / 3,928 (Ratio 2.48 / 2.48)

**Damage Factors: **SRDmg 67; MRDmg 13; LRDmg 0

**BattleForce2:**

**MP:** 4, **Armor/Structure:** 6/4

**Damage PB/M/L:** 8/7/-, **Overheat:** 0

**Class:** MH, **Point Value:** 16

**Specials: **c3i

* * *

**Type/Model: **Dondasch DND-10-A 

**Tech: **Mixed Tech / 3067

**Config: **Biped BattleMech

**Rules: **Level 3, Standard design

**Mass: **100 tons

**Chassis: **Reinforced (C)

**Power Plant: **300 XL Fusion (C)

**Walking Speed: **32.4 km/h

**Maximum Speed: **43.2 km/h

**Jump Jets: **None

**Jump Capacity: **0 meters

**Armor Type: **Hardened

**Armament:**  
4 ER Medium Lasers(C)  
1 ER PPC(C)  
1 Adv. Tact. Msl. 6(C)  
1 Heavy Medium Laser(C)  
1 ER Small Laser(C)

**Manufacturer: ** (Unknown)  
**Location: ** (Unknown) **  
Communications System: ** (Unknown)  
**Targeting & Tracking System:** (Unknown)

**Overview:**

Included as reference of another machine in Ninyu's Star. This is the mad-end of heavy armor as I built it, full hardened armor and reinforced internal structure. This is a 'mech that takes an insane amount of killing to kill (har har har!)

Note again that I have not written out the fluff for this machine yet, sorry. I will get around to it, I swear it.

* * *

**Type/Model**: Dondasch DND-10-A 

**Mass: **100 tons

Equipment:  
Crits, Mass

**Internal Structure:**  
152 pts Reinforced (C)  
0, 20.00

**Engine:**  
300 XL  
10, 9.50

**Walking MP: **3

**Running MP: **4

**Jumping MP: **0

**Heat Sinks:**  
20 Double (C) (40)  
16, 10.00 (Heat Sink Loc: 1 LA, 1 RA, 2 LT, 2 RT, 1 LL, 1 RL)

**XL Gyro:**  
6, 1.50

**Cockpit, Life Support, Sensors:**  
5, 3.00

**Actuators:**  
L: Sh UA LA H,  
R: Sh UA LA H  
16, .00

**Armor Factor:**  
Hardened (C)  
0, 38.50

* * *

Internal Structure, Armor Factor 

**Head: **3, 9

**Center Torso: **31, 46

**Center Torso (Rear): **(0), 16

**L/R Side Torso: **21, 32/32

**L/R Side Torso (Rear): **(0), 10/10

**L/R Arm: **17, 34/34

**L/R Leg: **21, 42/42

* * *

Weapons & Equipment:  
Loc, Heat, Ammo  
Crits, Mass 

2 ER Medium Lasers (C)  
RA, 10, (0)  
2, 2.00

2 ER Medium Lasers (C)  
LA, 10, (0)  
2, 2.00

1 ER PPC (C)  
RT, 15 (0)  
2, 6.00

1 Adv. Tact. Msl. 6 (C)  
RT, 4, 20  
5, 5.50 (Ammo Loc: 2 LT)

1 Heavy Medium Laser (C)  
LT, 7, (0)  
2, 1.00

1 ER Small Laser (C)  
HD, 2 (0)  
1, .50

CASE II Equipment (C):  
1, .50 (CASE II Loc: 1 LT)

**TOTALS:**

Heat: 48

**Crits: 68**

**Mass: 100.00**

**Crits & Tons Left:**

10, .00

* * *

Calculated Factors: 

**Total Cost: **24,819,500 C-Bills

**Battle Value: **2,527

**Cost per BV: **9,821.73

**Weapon Value: **8,314 / 8,314 (Ratio 3.29 / 3.29)

**Damage Factors: **SRDmg 46; MRDmg 31; LRDmg 8

**BattleForce2:**

**MP:** 3, **Armor/Structure:** 8/6

**Damage PB/M/L:** 8/6/2, **Overheat:** 1

**Class:** MA, **Point Value:** 25

* * *

FINAL WORD: 

If you have a design you want to see in this story or any of the other Jokers Wild works, drop it in a review or PM me, I'll look it over and see what I can do with it. Be sure to include the most possible detail for when I run it through the Heavymetal programs and someone sufficiently crazy enough to drive it (bio, background, mindset, etc.)


	4. On Treading And Thin Ice

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(04: On Treading And Thin Ice)

(AUTHOR'S NOTE: If you want to look at the terrain for the battle, you can. On MapQuest, enter Buffalo Grove, IL as your search location and switch from Street Map to Aerial Image. Yes, I am using real-world locations in and around Chicago for this. I used to live in the Chicago area.)

(Time Ref: Day three of the invasion, 1530)

While the bulk of the forces on the ground could be called 'deadly serious', that did not mean that all of them actually were such. Indeed, as the Admiralty Review and Assignment Board had got their digs in against the _Mjolnr_ in years past, which more or less necessitated the present cluster-fuck, not all the reinforcements were up to the very high operational standards, either. Some units just plain sucked, and those that did were issued support detail functions or only very minor skirmishing, that their failings would not be manifest to the enemy command and could not be exploited in turn.

Others, well, were unorthodox.

Grossly unorthodox.

"All right, Louie, fire her up!" The Tank Commander pulled the trigger on the lowest setting possible for the Zippo Phoenix Flamer, which was tied straight into the fusion reactor on the tank. The flamer itself was built right into the center-line of the turret and mounted coaxially to the massive Poland Main Model C Gauss Rifle, which meant that the fusion-vent ducting from the reactor had almost no movement from side to side and would not break under normal usage. It only took a second... "Oh, fuck! Stop! When! STOP! BLAST IT ALL!"

"Make up your Gods-damned mind," the Tank Commander replied over the external speaker.

"TURN IT OFF!" The flame cut out quickly. "Thanks, dipshit, now we _might_ have enough tree to do this, but I'm not taking bets here," the Star Captain over their unit says as the TC emerged from the hatch.

The grizzled, veteran TC inhaled. "Ah, I love the smell of burning oak," he replies, apparently completely disregarding the acid comment of his CO. "So, what are we cooking?"

"A fucking herd of cows, man," the TC for the next vehicle over replies.

"No shit," the TC for the other tank in his point replies.

"That's a lot of cow to cook," Louie finally replies, looking at the flatbed piled high with the carcasses of cows that had been killed by an errant artillery strike. There was some talk of it being a deliberate act on the part of one of the Magi gun crews, but such was loose talk with no evidence. While King Cobra crews had a sense of humor, the wholesale slaughter of cows was better preformed with a Cluster Shell, and these had been silenced by a VT shell (1), which was a common anti-infantry and anti-light-target artillery shell used by the Earth Alliance. Magi did not use VT, Magi or Mendel gunners used either Cluster for a wider pattern or Flechette for anti-personnel work. And the hell of it was that this was not all of the dead cows, the remainder had been delivered to a butchery for distribution to the civilians and soldiers throughout the Chicagoland area.

"Eat, drink, and be merry, gentlemen, for tomorrow someone dies. Preferably not us, of course, but the possibility is always there," their Star Captain replies.

"Aren't you just a fucking ray of sunshine, sir," the TC for the Alacorn IIM next to the tank with the Flamer says. The Alacorn IIM was a Magi rebuild and upgrade of the venerable and deadly Alacorn of Star League fame. Not much of an upgrade, their crews would say, just add two Optifree Extended Medium Lasers, three grenade launcher arrays, a Hessian Systems TalkBack C3I box, and a helluva lot more armor. Not _much_ of an upgrade, mind you.

The Fourth Mendel Mechanized Galaxy served as the northern guard, four Clusters of 'problem children' that were good in fighting, but definitely not up to the normal standards of conduct for a formation. In fact, the whole command structure from the Galaxy Commander down was the kind of soldiers that made the rest of Mendel wonder what rocks Princess Saturn had kicked over to find them. In reality, they were all the hard-ass volunteers from hundreds of units that would rather not have them around due to their unorthodox methods or antics. To a man, the whole unit was comprised of what 'normal' formations called 'screw-ups' and 'degenerates'. And that made things all the more entertaining for personnel that had already been dubbed 'closer to normal' by the rest of the unit.

Galaxy Commander Tira qualified as well. There was word up and down the ranks of the Fourth that Tira, who was one of the youngest Magi Galaxy Commanders ever (at 19, she was a tactical and strategic genius to smoke some far older than her), was also one of the most perverted and salacious Galaxy Commanders out there. This happened to be a high measure thereof, since the barracks of a typical Magi Garrison are rife with stories, tales, and rumors of pervert senior officers of both genders. In Louie's parlance that made things all the more interesting; his prior unit was commanded by a prude that did not know how to operate with his hair down and kept everything by some arcane set of guidelines that he should have been shot over. All that remained was to see where she drew the line, though so far she wasn't giving any of the usual signs of saying 'no' to the normal antics and even some of the stranger 'rituals' that seemed to be custom written by units like this.

Things only got better the farther down the chain of command one went, Louie knew already. His Star Colonel was a beer-drinking poker player, The Star Captain was a former Naval TechStriker and knew how to fluently and vehemently swear in about eight different languages (three of those nonhuman), and the Star Commander directly above him was a master of most card games and was reported to also be a salvage smuggler. All in all, a healthy, crazy, and effective crew in Louie's opinion.

So far Louie was getting along with the rest of his star and Trinary, but he was not getting along with the Star Commander of 1 Star, Gamma Trinary, which was an Assault Trinary and she believed herself all the better for it. Thus far Louie had managed to avoid the temptation to rip her face clean off and wipe his arse with it, solely on the dint that her Star Captain had already kicked her ass once for insubordination and disrespectful conduct to another Star Captain. The rest of her Star was cool and the rest of her Trinary was exemplary, just that one piss-poor foul Star Commander.

Thus far, his unit was earning their reputation as the craziest and least conventional of the 'conventional' ground forces deployed to Chicago.

"Give 'im a break, man," Louie tells the TC of the Alacorn, the one the crew had named 'Porcupine'. "Of course someone is going to die. More is the better, some people just plain deserve it. Of course, those that do are on the other side, but hey, in war you take a warrior's chances," Louie says. "Of course, I intend on stacking the odds in our favor," by which he meant not playing by any normal Mage definition of 'fair'.

"He has a point," the TC for the other tank in his point notes. "We are fucking rays of sunshine, when you get down to it. All the dipshits are coming in from the south, we have a crappy job really." This was predicated on them defending an axis that was presently not being attacked, and showed no signs of being attacked any time soon.

"Now, now, we did not form the Sledgehammer of Fate for the purpose of you guys being pessimists about it," their Star Colonel notes from between and slightly behind the Alacorn IIM turret to the left and the Von Luckner IIM turret to the right. "I expect a positive or neutral attitude out of you until everything goes to hell, anything goes after that," Star Colonel Mike Johansen adds after a moment.

" 'Kay, can do, sir," Louie says. "Hey, any word on where I might find some beer?"

"Or some rack 'n' tail might be nice as well," the TC for 'Porcupine' asks.

"The beer I can do," Mike replies. "I've already put out some orders to local bars, we will have beer available for tonight's feast. Local booty calls, however, are not in my purview," he notes with a tone that suggested the Alacorn IIM TC should get his mind out of the gutter. "As your Star Captain said, eat, drink, and be merry, gentlemen and ladies. I, however, prefer the thought that tomorrow we make the tangos die and we whizz on their graves."

"Roger that, Star Colonel," Louie says from the hatch of 'Red-Eye Rage', what a crew now long dead had named the tank he was riding in right now. The Von Luckner IIM he was riding in was over 400 years old, lovingly maintained and enhanced with new electronics packages when they came available, and would undoubtedly be very lethal to the pissants that came storming toward his position.

Over where he had started the fire, a group of Salamander Battle Armor had begun hefting and prepping the cows for roasting or butchering. Their own flamers were also helping to get auxiliary fires going for the cooking of other foods and purposes. In mere hours, they would indeed feast.

-x-x-x-

"Ladies and gentlemen, it is time for sub-operation Blackhorse," the five-star General over the whole Chicago theater says to the assembled officers. "So far we have done a good job in proving how 'weak' our forces are throughout our battles on the south and west sides of Chicago and the suburbs. This may have drawn their forces into a feeling of ennui, that they have the advantage of defense and superior technology, but this has also stretched their forces thin and left one direction woefully exposed, which we shall capitalize on in the coming days."

The projector snaps on, showing the map of Chicago that many of those commanders knew all to well, and dreaded all the same. It showed the main 'kill zones' established by the various Mendel forces as well as the nominal flight ranges of the Mendel Aero forces. If you drew a lop-sided oval around Chicago, larger in the west-to-east dimension than else, and centered it on Cabrini Green, where the ends of the oval stretched out to the border of Michigan to the east and well beyond the suburbs to the west, you had a picture of their zone of control. In essence, Mendel owned Chicago and showed no sign of giving it up.

"Here, to the north is a known weak point that we can capitalize on. This area here, between the 53 Highway and the 294 Expressway is a known weak point with basically one unsupported galaxy of Mendel armor forces and some mixed Infantry forces. Their nearest backup is a helluva distance away, which gives us an opportunity to hit them here and maybe force our way through their lines. It will require coordinated assaults on all three of our present vectors to allow the forty-second Airborne to assault this area without much in the way of additional resistance, but that should be easy to arrange. The force for the breakthrough will be the forty-second Airborne Division, supported by our regional artillery command and what's left of our air support." Which did not amount to much, as any of Mendel's fighters was superior to even the Skygrasper with the Launcher Strike Pack. High performance did not make up for a lack of armor and only marginal firepower advantages over the Mendel aero core, and often those advantages could not be brought to bear in a battle. If anything else, the air war was already lost to the Earth Alliance, but trying was as much a requirement as anything else.

"Now, mind you this area is not unguarded. Mendel has stationed a whole galaxy of armor forces here, tanks and the like, and they are not light forces when you get down to it. Four Clusters of 150 units per cluster stands between the breakthrough and the interior of their occupation zone. That amounts to 600 tanks in the end, a force larger than the United States used in Operation Iraqi Freedom, and the US still won their ground campaign categorically before they failed the occupation years later."

"And we are playing the force of the Iraqis in this case, trying to break through the United States assault to force a stop of their advance, correct?" Colonel Lin Park asks. Eurasian by birth, he signed up with the Earth Alliance before the first war and managed to survive both ZAFT and the Jokers' Fury. Some called him lucky, but his scores were actually enough to rival those of the average Mendel officer, and he had been checked three times by Earth Alliance command to ensure he was not coordinator.

The General sighs. "That and more, Colonel Park. We're presently stuck in some crazy amalgam of World War II Nazi Germany, Turn-of-the-millennium Iraq Republican Guard, and this one is going to floor most of you, we actually also play the role of our erstwhile foes, the Magi." Indeed, his comment had drawn disgusted moans from them all.

"That's highly unfair, sir, we're definitely better than all three of them groups!" One of the officers behind Lin shouts.

"Now, before any of you get to bitching too loud, listen. We have three objectives here, one each from those three eras that I mentioned. First, from World War Two in 1940, the initial invasion of France, we must play the blitzkrieg, the lightning war, and use this weak spot to drive through their forces and southward into their rear as far as we can go. There is always talk of a 250-mile advance in blitzkrieg battles, where the attacking force after achieving their breakthrough typically only goes about 250 miles before their advance grinds to a halt, normally for flank or logistic reasons. From this break-in point it is not 250 miles to the shore of Lake Michigan, and actually less than thirty miles to the airport, their true Achilles' Heel."

The General shifts his weight as he points to the map with a laser pointer. "Second, mirrored from Operation Iraqi Freedom, we have a combination military and political task on our hands. We must stop the enemy forward momentum, and in so doing we shall make it appear to Mendel's citizens that this war effort on their part will cost them more than submitting to our will shall cost them."

_Political bullshit_, Colonel Park thinks.

_They will submit or die_, Captain Peter thinks behind a pitiless expression.

"Mendel has been expanding the presence of their front lines to the point that our fighters cannot range to even within sight of the airports, they have driven us that far back. The hell of their operational expertise is that any ground unit, including their tanks, are anti-air platforms. A Skygrasper is not going to stay in the air for long if it encounters a rail guns slug going 7500 feet per second in the opposite direction the fighter is going, and the gauss rifle is a favored weapon of the enemy tanks as much as it is the battlemechs. We have to stop this phenomenal forward progress, or it's over for us."

_Are we fated to lose_? Colonel Park asks himself. _Must Mendel win this battle for something far greater to happen at another time and another day_?

_We will destroy them, it is the only hope for real humans_, Captain Peter thinks aloud.

"Third, and how we manage to mirror the Magi, we must prove our operational dominance in such a fashion that Mendel understands we cannot be defeated. The Magi have used this tactic before to great effect, more than once, and the premise holds here that if we can prove to them that we cannot be completely defeated they may give up," the General says.

_Not a chance in hell of that_, Colonel Park thinks. He knew better, knew that the same fear tactic the Magi used would not affect them or their descendants as much as it would anyone else.

_Yes! Let's scare them shitless, she how they like it_! Captain Peter shouts inside the confines of his own mind.

"And how we are going to do this is by throwing the whole Division against them, centered here, at Buffalo Grove. The enemy has several strong points here, here, and here, centered on these open fields and parks to avoid congesting the roads and running people's houses over, but we have seen where that goes by the wayside in favor of the battle. We can slam this one, the southernmost of the strongpoints, and bust through their armor here to continue onward to our objective. We will also slam through, here, east of Buffalo Creek and down the old rail line here. If we can secure this area, we can run a freight train down into their rear areas loaded with personnel. Oops," he tacks on as a barb for the enemy's supposed lack of foresight.

_An artillery shell or small bomb will put paid to that plan_, Colonel Park thinks. _Mendel left that rail line open for a reason_, he tacked on afterwards, still in the confines of his mind. The premise was simple: a speeding freight train did not stop on a dime, and a shell or bomb that ripped up the rail tracks a mere 100 meters in front of the train would cause a catastrophic derailment; the Conductor would have mere seconds to stick his head between his legs and kiss his ass goodbye. That being done, the Mendel Aero Forces needed only come along behind and hose the ground units that were scattered and damaged and inoperable for an easy win.

"Our attack commences at 0400 tomorrow, with the first elements hitting the enemy south strongpoint at 0430 south of the McHenry Road. By the plan, we should have driven the enemy back to Dundee Road and enveloped the other strongpoints by 0600." Those who were looking at a map figured that a very generous time frame, ninety minutes to drive the dreaded enemies out of their holes and backwards a whopping six hundred meters, not even a full kilometer. Of course the preferable bt unstated goal would be to kill them in place and walk over their graves, but it was unlikely they would get them all, so the operational planning for driving them back instead of killing them all was a sound one.

"Colonel Park, is your Regiment ready to go?" the General asks.

"Yes, sir, we're ready," Colonel Park replies, hoping his voice did not betray what he really thought of the operational concept.

"Excellent, yours will be the lead elements in the assault on the enemy strongpoint here, just south of McHenry Road. The enemy formation here, the Mendel Fourth Mechanized, is not going to be a simple foe to take down, but keep in mind that you are only going to be forcing through one Cluster of their forces, they have 150 tanks in the area and that is it. Their whole Galaxy is hamburgered from Buffalo Creek Forest Preserve all the way over to Chevy Chase. A concentrated strike in one place combined with pressure across the whole line will fold them up, bury them, and piss on their graves."

_Who is 'them' in this equation? Us or Mendel_? Colonel Park thinks. "Sir, if I'm doing the breaching action, I'm going to need more firepower per unit to counter Mendel's defensive advantage. I need Doppelhorn and Launcher Strike packs, maybe even some of the IWSP and Gunbarrel packs for pilots qualified on them," he hedges.

"Talk to the Colonel of the Logistics Trains, he can hook you up with more bang than you have buck," the General says wryly.

"Understood, sir, thank you," Colonel Park replies.

"Colonel MacElle, is your Regiment going to be ready?"

At this point Colonel Park zoned out, thinking ahead to what he had to do to make sure his formation survived mostly intact. The Division had 12 regiments, each of near-equal size to the rest, which means in theory they outnumbered the enemy almost three to one in armor and ten to one in follow-on infantry. These numbers were predicated on the fact that the enemy would not be able to reinforce after the full-court press began in earnest, which qualified as a dangerous assumption to make, but a calculated one even so. Being an Airborne Division, the 42nd would use its mobility to counter the likely slower and less mobile Mechanized forces...provided they could overcome the firepower and range advantages the Mendel forces had. And this above and beyond having to deal with Mendel's Aero Forces, artillery batteries, and even suborbital bombardment from the enemy Warships.

In due time the Regiment and Brigade commanders had been briefed on where they were going to attack, though the plan on how would be left to each individual Colonel. "Any questions?" the General concluded.

"Yes, sir, are we required to take prisoners if they surrender?" Captain Peter says.

"As per Earth Alliance Ruling 16807, Mendel is not considered a legitimate nation-state, therefore we are not dealing with an actual military. They are terrorists, and that is how they will be dealt with, clear?" of which the policy was simple: kill them all and count the bodies.

"Clear, sir," Captain Peter replies.

"Dismissed," the General orders. "Brigade Commanders will have their initial thrust plans to me no later than midnight," he appends as the crew in the tent stands up.

-x-x-x-

(0320 hours, day four)

Louie had to admit that the booty his driver had found was rather quiet about it. Halfway back the tank, he could only barely hear her making any noise, and that was a good thing. He did not want to hear the classic porno shouting unless he was involved, and she had made it clear to others in Louie's crew that she was not that kinky.

"All right, boss, I'll take over," the main gun loader says. His was mostly an automated task, as the machinery had to do most of the dirty work since each slug weighed in at 125 kilograms, he made sure that it fed right and that the missile systems loaded properly

"Finally," Louie grumps as he hauls himself out of the TC hatch and on top of the tank into the cool night air. With a flair of movement he was on the ground and walking toward the rear of the strongpoint before his loader had even seated himself properly.

The principle was simple. Since the formation was part of the 'front lines' (such as they were on the north side of Chicago), there were always eyes looking outward, eyes looking skyward, and even a few eyes looking backwards since the possibility of a spaceborne hot-drop assault was there (remote, but there nonetheless). Despite being unofficially known as 'the screwoff Galaxy' the Sledgehammer Of Fate did not want to go home in a coffin, more or less to a man, so they did everything by the book when it came to guard detail.

"How goes it?" Louie asks as he approaches a huddle of soldiers using a small red-filtered lantern to play a game of cards in the pre-dawn darkness.

"Pretty good, Louie," and he immediately recognized the voice of the TC for Hell's Barmaid, one of the Tokugawa MBT in his star. Eliza, the Tank Commander in question, normally passed for what one would think a normal 'pop star' would look like, if she was not military. Halfway to salacious, popular with those she was around, the only thing missing was some kind of content to get her a fanbase. "How's it lookin' up forward?"

"Nice and quiet. I saw some onesy-twosie Windams north of us at three kilos or more, just looking around, not doing anything malicious except stepping on people's houses."

"Excellent, this keeps up and we may not have to do anything until we break out and start in on the plains," which was really phase two of the Chicago battle plan, as everyone figured it would be. Phase one was the break-in and takeover of Chicago, phase two everyone spread out radially from Chicago, taking territory and immolating leftover enemy formations not killed off in the fighting around Chicago, phase three was the crossing of the Appalachian mountains, which really were the last terrain obstacle before the North American eastern seaboard, phase four was the inevitable assault on Washington. It was a completely conventional military campaign, basically striking the enemy political center of gravity and chopping them off from the rest of the enemy command structure. That accomplished, along with the destruction of Heavens Base, would basically give the Atlantic Federation no choice but to stack arms and surrender since there would be nothing worthwhile left to fight for.

"We must be the blaring exceptions, then," Louie says as he sits down at the table with them.

"What?" Eliza asks, since his comment was completely unqualified with no subject.

"Mendel and ZAFT. We're the blaring exceptions here, we have a lot to fight for, the Atlantic Federation both does and does not have a lot to fight for."

"How so?" the main gunner for Eliza's crew says. This before a certain hard-to-miss whine begins approaching. "Huh? Who the hell has pockets that deep in this unit?" Eliza asks as she looks south toward the oncoming sound.

"Wait a second, those are...Silence Glaive MBT?" Louie asks, recognizing the silhouette after breaking out his night vision goggles and looking in their direction. "Those things are fucking expensive," he comments after the first one finishes turning onto the road headed almost straight at them.

"Oh, yeah, those are the 602nd Fusilers," Eliza's driver says. "I heard they were scheduled for drop late last night, they two heavy brigades, one of heavy tanks, one of heavy 'mechs. Badass Mercs for badass problems," the diminutive driver says. "I wonder..."

"What?" Louie asks as the tanks in question began their thundering drive up South Buffalo Grove Road.

"Did anyone tell them that this is a one-way trip for involved forces, or are they under a classification contract where they can't talk about it when they go back?"

"May be one-way," Louie says. "Mercs were falling on hard times of late before the _Mjolnr_ disappeared, and then we get called up for this scratch-up op. My crew jumped in because we're fucking nuts and saw it as a challenge. They probably figured it was a way to actually earn their keep instead of using up their financial reserves."

"Either way, I'd kill to have one of those Silence Glaive MBTs," Eliza says. "I'd need to double my crew size, but after yesterday finding enough Blue Cosmos haters in Chicago should be a snap," she says, predicating her thought on the fact that Blue Cosmos had not made any friends by attacking the town in such a sloppy, omni-destructive fashion the prior day. The civilian casualties were mounting faster than the Mendel casualties, but significantly slower than the Earth Alliance casualties. All the same, Louie had been asked by about a half-dozen civilians yesterday to kill them all and have God count the bodies, as opposed to only one who told him to get off Earth and go to Hell. Louie had no real objections to that, he always wanted to drive his Von Luckner through the gates of Hell and up to Satan's mansion, for the purposes of stealing said devil's weed stash and to say he had already been to hell and back before breakfast (and get away with it). The catch was, he figured he wouldn't get the chance to drive a Von Luckner in Hell if he ended up KIA, which is why he always trained harder, harder.

Silence Glaive was a horrid weapon of war through and through, and many tankers wanted to drive one very bad for just that reason. A super-heavy tank, weighing in at 175 tons with 50 of that being weapons and over 30 of that armor, it was slow and ponderous but easily capable of nuking a Mobile Suit in as little as part of one volley. Given that it carried more in guns and ammo than some of the tanks massed total in the unit, there would be a bit of a wave of envy when they rolled to a stop at their assigned defensive location. The selling point of the Silence Glaive was the fact that it was easily configured for an Omni-vehicle, all the weapon space was in the wedge-shaped oblate turret, and it could carry anything up to and including the much-feared Long Tom artillery piece, which itself weighed thirty tons. The one downside was the sticker price, being over 50 million C-bills apiece it was not a cheap weapon of war by any definition. At least it was better than the original draft design, which would have been around 120 million C-bills per tank.

"Wait, what are they doing here?" Louie asks. "This is a green zone, no enemy activity. Those Earth Alliance retards don't have a clue this area is a weak spot, they only want in on the major highways."

"Don't count on that, Louie," Eliza says. "They can't stay completely stupid forever, but I will settle for somewhat dumb for the rest of our campaign."

"Ain't that the truth," Louie says. He expected that, and even acknowledged it, but he liked it about as much as he relished the thought of a gay orgy, which is to say not a chance in hell.

The first of the Silence Glaive tanks stopped on the road parallel to the table that Louie was sitting at. "Achtung! Do you know where I can find Epsilon of first Cluster?" the TC for the tank asks. Louie looked over what he could see of the tank in the bright moonlight, and apparently the tank had been named 'Blitzed Krieg', which he could guess was a mash of both an English term for 'drunk' and the German word for war. The picture of several full beer mugs simply reinforced the thought.

"You found it," Eliza shouts back; "This line right here," she appends, pointing to the front built by the rest of the Trinary.

"Ja, ja, Gott danken, frau behälterkommandant danke," he says before he sinks back into his tank and it lurches forward.

"What the hell did he just call you?" Louie asks.

"He said, and I quote, 'Yes, yes, thank God, thank you lady tank commander," before he dropped down and told his crew to get their asses in gear," Eliza says.

"Definitely a case of Japanese as a second language," Louie says in surprise. "German?"

"Honest-to-the-Gods German, probably a captured and recruited German troop from a subcontract to Sigma," Eliza says as but one of many possible theories of how he got into that unit. Sigma Mercenaries were rather famous for having an indoctrination program for captured soldiers that did not want returned to their government, who later became part of Sigma's active-duty personnel. The subcontractors to Sigma, of which the 602nd Fusilers were part of Sigma's subcontractors, also did this in their own fashion since finding reliable personnel among the Star Empires was not always the easiest of tasks.

"German always sounds demonic to me," Louie says. "Something about the syntax and phrasing...sounds evil, really evil. I'll bet it is a helluva language to go off on someone," he adds.

"It is," Eliza says. "My mother spoke fluent German from the Steiner territories, when she blew up on you, it was loud and very abrasive," and Louie could only grimace at such a thought. "And my husband, a tech on one of our Dropships, speaks German, Swedish, and Dutch. You?"

"Arabic and Sylvan," Louie replies. Japanese and English were given and understood, every school in the Empire taught them as a matter of course since it was a legal requirement (they were the standard languages of the realm). Depending on where you were born, other languages would be handed down through the family or taught in schools, or both, since the Empire did not allow for crushing a local culture in favor of the Empire's word and teachings. It only served to show the Empire was more honorable than most, which made for more fervent citizens and more respect for the Empire overall. After all, the Emperor had once said that 'by the time you're dead enough to figure out which religion's version of God is right, you're too dead to come back and tell the rest of us who got it right', which by extension anyone can be right or wrong or both, Louie figured.

"Arabic? Why didn't they put you in the middle east, then?" Eliza asks with a raised eyebrow.

"What? You think they'd put an all-Empire reject like me anywhere **but** in a unit full of them? That is _so_ not the Magi way," Louie says at his most facetious. Both had a good laugh at that, they knew the routine as well as the rest of the Sledgehammer of Fate and were enjoying it. In truth, congregations of units like the one Louie was in were grossly rare but exalted, since they also had a very nasty reputation for being very effective over a given time period. The only problem was that assembling that many 'rejects' into one unit caused all manner of 'secondary' problems, varying from 'reallocated supplies' all the way to 'officer gigging' and every possible offense in between. Not that people didn't get a laugh out of any of the above, but it was not typical conduct and caused problems for the rest of the Division (2), so it was avoided.

"And all things considered, it looks like command is playing on that fact. Maybe the enemy will realize we're so fucked up they'll avoid us, lest whatever we have contaminate their units, follow?" Eliza asks.

"I hear that," Louie says as the dealer in their card game deals him in. "Okay, what's the game today?"

"Five card draw," the dealer says amid moans from the other players. "Wussies," he says as he finishes dealing everyone out.

-x-x-x-

(Day four, 0358 hours)

Colonel Park yawned; the stress was making him tired, the waiting always did that to him. He could tell by looking at the clock, however, he would be lacking stress here in short order, replaced by adrenaline and outright fear.

The plan had been finalized. They would hit the entire line of the Fourth Mendel Mechanized from one side to the other by cascade, starting to the west and advancing east until their whole line was engaged. During this increasing pressure, the Regiment the Colonel controlled would first invest the strongpoint in question, then would punch through their line in classic blitzkrieg fashion, driving deep into the heart of the enemy held territory until they took the airport, the linchpin of the North America invasion. After thinking about it, being in the regimental-level planning and related, he was less worried about it provided they could shock the enemy hard enough and they did not bring up a sizable amount of reinforcements.

"Warning, we have word that the enemy has added an extra company to the forces at the breakthrough area. Appears to be super-heavy tanks of an unrecognized type, not something we learned about yesterday. Colonel Park, please advise," his operator says.

"Colonel Park reporting," the Colonel says after selecting his command-level radio systems and deactivating the regiment tactical radios. "I copy the tactical flash traffic, do we know how many units were added total?"

"Twelve, all of them fairly large."

"That puts them 162 to my 144," he mutters.

"Colonel Park, General Gillian," the five-star over Chicago begins.

"Reading five by five, sir," Colonel Park replies immediately.

"I am giving your zone an extra pass for artillery as well as on-call authorization. Your timetable will be unchanged, invest them at 0420 and punch through. We're counting on you, Colonel."

"Roger that, sir," he says.

"All personnel stand by, artillery will commence in five...four...three...two...one...now," the General says over an all-personnel broadcast which undoubtedly would be heard by the enemy as well as his forces, but at that time there was no turning back and even less time to stick their heads between their legs and kiss their asses goodbye.

The whole sky was lit orange with the belch of propellant from artillery cannons detonating simultaneously. No doubt the enemy was already scurrying for their tanks and bunkers, but some of them would be caught outside of their tanks when the first wave—VT, for killing personnel and damaging wheeled or hover units—arrived and detonated in red-orange blurbs all around them. Even if all they succeeded in doing was killing a few dozen of their ranks exposed, it would be better than facing completely fresh personnel and vehicles.

After round two, the order was to use ICM (3) and standard shell for damaging armored targets. These would be accompanied in by what was left of the available cruise missiles and unguided rockets from the few remaining MLRS units. The enemy attack helicopters—infinitely worse than ZAFT's dreaded Agile Attack Helicopter—had spent the bulk of the prior day hunting out artillery and mobile launcher units, and contrary to pre-war intel reports one helicopter was capable of carrying honest-to-God bombs in addition to standoff-range antitank missiles, light-duty rockets, and even air-to-air missiles and anti-radiation missiles. Hiding had even been of little use to the mobile artillery units, their systems were capable of picking out a 'stealthy' mobile artillery track under several layers of camouflage netting and busting it open with an antitank missile. There was no hiding from them whatsoever, and that scared Lin more than anything else.

And Mendel's airpower only got worse. The Fireballs were bad, each fighter weighing more than some cargo planes and armed with more guns than a platoon of Mobile Suits. The Specter aircraft were worsein that each craft was capable of annihilating every living being and armored target in an area five football fields long by one field wide in ten seconds, and Mendel had a completely indeterminate amount of them. For sure the Earth Alliance had already shot down three of them, but in the end that was not enough to slow down the death from above that was practically guaranteed to the ground forces. And so far all Mendel had lost in helicopters was one supply chopper and one of the attack helicopters.

The ground shook again as another barrage of artillery cut loose. Colonel Park had been paying attention to the method by which the enemy dug themselves in, and found that they followed patterns similar to the Earth Alliance in that they dug down normally to allow visible only their turrets, which made them very difficult to target and strike, not to mention their tanks were survivable if their turrets took a hit or two...or five, in some cases. Even if you blew the turret clear off most of the Magi tanks, they were still survivable. Colonel Park could do naught but grit his teeth in frustration, knowing that the enemy held such overwhelming technological superiority that you could kill a tank in one sense and it would still be able to drive away and come back another day, fresh crew and turret included.

In the distance, Colonel Park could see the artillery shells detonating, some of them visibly which would indicate they struck a target down that way. The old 155mm artillery standard was so grossly outdated that the Mendel forces completely eschewed it sometime between their first minor war and their so-called Star Empires Wars, replaced with the Thumper for light duty (which was double more powerful than the 155), Snipers for midrange, Arrow IV for portability, and Long Tom for the really big jobs and long ranges. In his night vision systems he could see the turrets of tanks rotating back and forth just barely, searching for targets. Even the new tanks, the super-heavies had dug themselves in and were sitting there, awaiting something to blow up. It was a waiting game, really, the Colonel had twenty minutes to watch the impotent artillery try to scratch the enemy by the numbers, then he would go in behind them and hope his force was ample to blow through what was left of the enemy Cluster and its reinforcements.

"How's our attacks going down south, Operator?"

"Just about like yesterday, sir, except were getting our butts spanked harder," she says, not completely willing to be crass about it.

"And not in an entertaining way," another of the Operators replies on the same frequency. "We're trading Regiments for Trinaries across the board, if the numbers are adding up as our boards are showing."

"War of attrition," Lin notes. He strokes what little mustache he had, thinking hard. "There is no finesse here, the only way is to overpower them. If we can overpower them," he thinks aloud. The trick was focusing enough power anywhere without making it obvious enough that the _Nirvana Celeste_ blew that formation to hell before the attack began, which would be followed up by air and artillery strike and finally by ground forces to make sure the former did the job right.

Colonel Park had to admit that the Magi and Mendel combat models relied heavily on their fire support forces, but in the end there was little a foe could do when caught under withering support fire. Like every other function in their military, the support forces trained long and hard on their duties, and were some of the best in Existence at what they did. Therefore, when the artillery forces dialed the enemy in, it caused casualties in any force caught in the barrage, more so when counting the technological disparity between the Earth Alliance and Mendel.

"It's not going to be impossible," Lin's Operator notes. "Intel thinks we've already disabled two of the tanks in your area, and the artillery has a lot more time to go," she says.

"Two out of 162 is not a good start," Lin says. "Thanks, Colonel Park is clear," he says before turning down his radio and turning off the transmit.

-x-x-x-

(Day four, 0405 hours)

"Glad you could make it, boss-man," Louie's main gunner says as Louie finishes crawling into the commander's hatch and seals it. It was a good thing, as well, since the top of the turret rang to the sound of an artillery shell detonating on top of it not a moment thereafter. "Fuckers," he swears as Louie goes about belting himself into his chair and setting the controls up to his preference.

"I'm glad I didn't get shredded on my way here, they are laying it down thick today," Louie says drolly. "Tank's status?"

"Doing good so far, they've only hit us with four common shells," his engineer says. Common shells were standard detonate-on-impact artillery rounds, as opposed to the exotic special purpose rounds like VT, Cluster, or Flare (or others).

"All right, bring up all systems and get ready for a rush on our position. If they're smart, they'll keep pounding us with artillery until their ground forces come in," Louie orders. "Prepare for standoff fire, all weapons ready status."

"Targeting up, no targets in standoff range," the main gunner says.

"Engine up," the Engineer says.

"Drivetrain up," the Driver says.

"Loading up," the main weps loader says.

"And still nobody at the comms station," Louie says, completing the crew's inside staffing joke. Normally Louie did the comms duty, sometimes his loader if everything appeared to be working right, but not always.

"Erm, need some help?" The voice was grossly unfamiliar, not to mention the wrong gender to match anyone in the tank. Louie immediately looked to the speaker, and realized that it was Greg's date for the night.

"Well, it's too late to kick you out of the tank, no chance in Hell you would get home in one piece," Louie says. "Get a helmet on and grab up that fire extinguisher next to you. We'll need it before the day is up," Louie says.

"What? Serious?" She asks.

"Something always catches fire on us in here when we go out shooting stuff. It is the nature of our tank," Louie says.

"Hold on, boss-man, why not put her at a console so she can spot for things coming in at us?" the Gunner asks.

"Better idea, you may have just earned your keep, Harold," Louie says. "See that console right there?" Louie points to a console that was forward and left of him. She nods. "Fold down that jumpseat next to it and fire it up. The console should automatically activate on the external sights," Louie says as she throws the power switch on it to active. "All right, the joystick to your left is what controls the camera direction. Just look around, if you see anything unusual, tell me."

"Sure," she says as she begins looking around using the external night vision cameras.

The sensation of silence and no movement was like a cough, something that overwhelmed everything else for a moment. Despite being in a large-frame and heavy-armor tank with the suspension system from hell, the Von Luckner was still jolting with every artillery impact in the area. However, the jolting slowed down after three good minutes of it, fired up again, stopped, fired up again, and stopped completely, all in the space of a minute.

"I'd say our Artillery just sent their artillery packing," the Gunner says.

"Good news, bad news," Louie says. "Without their artillery, they will be more desperate on the offensive," he adds grimly.

"Is that a good thing?"

"Okay, if I may ask, what is your name?" Louie asks of the lady.

"Lizzie, or Liz for short," she replies.

"Well Liz, you can rest assured that since we've already been shelled once today, and since it is only 0412 in the Gods-damned morning, it is a bad day. Between now and sundown, it is only going to get worse. A 'good thing' may be if somehow the Earth Alliance bastards fell over simultaneously from heart attacks, but I don't see that happening." Louie flicks a switch. "Sledgehammer Six, this is 4-Ironside-03, do we have any targets at this time?"

"4-Ironside, hold your position at this time. We are getting a full-court press over in the area of Colossus Cluster, enemy appears to be cascading south from the west to east. You may be invested in the next fifteen. Sledgehammer, out," the Galaxy Commander replies.

"Cascade assault? Do they think we're that dumb?" The Loader asks.

"Likely," Louie replies. "Of course, we are far smarter than that," Louie says.

"I have something," Liz says. "Looks like...one of the Earth Alliance Mobile Suits you see in their propaganda shorts," she adds.

"A Windam," Louie says. He slaves his screen to her viewer. "Right, roger that, I have one Windam at range...no, four Windams at range...3200 meters, closing fast," he says.

"Tell me when they get to 2800 meters, I'll give them something to think about," the Gunner says.

Their radio crackles. "Ironside Cluster, this is Galaxy Commander. I confirm you have enemies at range. Pop off a few rounds to suck them in, but don't try to standoff them. If what I'm reading from intel is right, you don't have enough of the right kind of firepower to annihilate them at range. Draw them in close and hammer them flat. Command structure acknowledge," she orders.

"Star Colonel acknowledges."

"Alpha acknowledges."

"Beta acknowledges."

"Delta acknowledges."

"Epsilon acknowledges."

"Gamma acknowledges."

"Be advised that I have a call out for reinforcements and air support, but there are a lot of them to kill and there is going to be a delay in support. Hold until relieved."

"Pleasant thought," Louie mutters. "Star Captain, how are we doing this?"

"Each Trinary pops off a volley of LRMs, keep it light, so we don't shove them in the wrong direction. Hit or miss really doesn't matter right now, just try to suck them in. I want two vehicles from each star to do this."

"Red-Eye Rage volunteers," Louie says. The LRM-10 on his tank would be more than sufficient to the task.

"Holy Shit is in," the TC for said tank adds. 'Holy Shit' and its sister tank, 'Holy Light', were Manticore IIM PPC variants, and each carried a Streak LRM 10 as well as the much-dreaded Optifree DistKiller ER PPC. The ten tons of armor on the chassis was the other reason why some Medium 'mech pilots crapped themselves when they had to face the Manticore IIM, since the tank had as much armor as many heavy 'mechs and equivalent firepower to a heavier light 'mech. And the Manticores usually did not miss.

"Do it," the Star Colonel replies.

"Gunner, one salvo of LRMs every thirty seconds until I call full fire," Louie orders. "And try not to miss, LRMs are expensive," he cautions.

"Roger that, we're outside normal lock-on, going for dead fire," the Gunner says as he puts his eye to the sights.

"Holy Shit has tone on their lead, let's give them a bloody nose," the TC for Holy Shit says. "Firing!"

The hull of the Von Luckner echoed to the sound of the Delta Dart CT LRM-10 rack unloading, which was actually against general wisdom for the Von Luckner crews. Typically a crew would fire one missile at a time from the 10-rack, as firing all ten usually caused what would be delicately called 'overkill' against most Mobile Suits without advanced armor. Not to mention the missiles were just as effective one at a time over a few seconds compared to the whole rack at once, and sometimes better as the gunner could correct his aimpoint or check fire if an enemy AMS began raggin' on his salvo.

"Go...go...go...sweet tap, good shooting Harold," in the distance one of the Windams crumpled under the missile flight, another had a leg and an arm ripped off by the missiles from the Manticore IIM. Similar attacks had been dispensed with throughout the Trinary, resulting in a total of six LRM flights headed downrange from the Trinary and thirty from the whole Cluster. Fourteen salvos struck targets, as the gunners had almost a complete minute to track in on the targets before firing, resulting in excellent careful aim leading up to the shot (4).

"Boss...I think we got their attention," the Engineer says, himself looking through one of the scopes.

"Star Commander Draze, recommend we go hot on our ECMs before they start getting good locks, over," Louie says over the Trinary frequency on accident.

"Point Commander," Louie's immediate CO begins; "I would like to know which of our tanks has ECM, and why nobody told me about it," which comment drew the inevitable laughs from the rest of the Tank Commanders.

"Shit," Louie replies, disheartened.

"Relax, the Silence Glaive in the hole behind you has an Angel ECM and its already turned on. They can see us on IR but their targeting systems can't lock us up, they'll have to fire blind."

"For what we are about to receive..." the Engineer mutters as a hellish wave of missiles from hand-carried bazookas and shells from their Doppelhorn artillery units begins landing in their general vicinity. One of the shells even struck the front glacis plate of the Red-Eye Rage. "Negligible damage, boss," the Engineer says.

"Prepare to fire all ranged weps," Louie orders. "Targets are just getting ready to cross Aptakisic road, range 2700 meters."

"I can arc a Gauss Rifle round down one of their throats from here, sir," Harold notes.

"Oh, shit, does that one have—SHIT!" The Engineer shouts. "Hyper Impulse Cannon! Pucker your assholes, people!"

The beam from the Agni Hyper Impulse Cannon passed close enough that its transit caused a small buffet to the tank; a second beam struck to the right of the tank that caused it to shudder from translated shockwaves through the ground.

"To hell with waiting—"

"All forces go live, fire at will, fire at will," the Star Colonel orders, making Louie's initiative official.

"Playtime's over, kiddies," the Gunner says as the enemies pass 2600 meters away. It was still a long shot, and all the more difficult with them moving, but far from impossible. Buildings and trees in between only gave him fleeting glimpses of the targets, but he could still guesstimate their locations... "Firing!" The tank shuddered as the first real Gauss Rifle shot it had made in over a century was discharged, headed on a high arc for the enemy and trailing the typical nickel swirls behind it.

His shot was lost in the din as flight after flight after flight of Long-range and Extended Long Range missiles went downrange, tracking in on the enemy or aimed haphazardly in their general direction. From left the crimson beam of a ER Large Laser spoke at the outside of its possible striking profile, and the hit it garnered by luck (after passing four mobile suits) was depleted of a fifth of its energy but still lethal to a Windam nonetheless. A second such laser was fired, but it dug into an house and started a structure fire, causing no damage to the enemy.

"Good Gods," Louie mutters. "Don't slow down, Harold, there's no shortage of them to kill off."

-x-x-x-

"Don't slow down!" Colonel Park shouts over his unit frequency and the bitching of his main subordinate officers. "Dash from building to building, use cover and close up on them! Fire those missile launchers, suppress them! We must close up on them or their support forces will tear us to ribbons out here!" His Mobile Suit, painted green and white instead of the typical blue-on-white, waves the forces forward.

A Rail Gun slug struck a tree nearby his Windam, making one of the most demonic sounds he had ever heard in terms of weapon splash sounds. Second only to the sound of a Naval PPC cluster striking nearby and tearing a 500-meter rent in the battle lines he was observing. The sound of hundreds of souls being erased off the face of the planet by gunfire from space was something that still gave him acute nightmares, despite his 'hardening' to the realities of war.

His laser rangefinder showed they had 2400 meters to go until they were at the enemy front lines, and these forces were shooting somewhat accurately at ranges well outside the 'maximum effective' range of their weapons. His Regiment was not supposed to be subject to LRMs, and by intel only two of the tanks he had glimpses of—RangeMaster Fire Support Tanks—had the ELRMs capable of striking over three kilometers away. There were other tanks up there that he did not recognize, and he could only guess what they were capable to. It was often said that for every imaginable purpose and condition in war, the Magi had a dozen or more models of equipment, piloted by some of the best in Existence. And that thought gave Lin Park the chills.

"Move it up! Up and at 'em!" the Colonel shouts. "If we stop here, we're guaranteed dead! Get in on them!"

"Yes sir!" Captain Peter half-shouts in reply. His unit was shield-charging forward, followed by others doing the same. No slowdown, nothing, just at it, as Colonel Park needed it to happen. One of the units nearby Captain Peter took a Rail Gun slug to the shield, which blew it clear in half, but the rest of the suit was unharmed from the strike. The unit in question had the Lightning Striker Pack equipped, which he used the electromagnetic rifle to return fire for a pair of hits to the offending very large tank. Not even Colonel Park recognized the enemy model of tankl, but he could only guess that it was almost 200 tons.

Colonel Park was only able to rustle up five of the dreaded Launcher Strike packs, and he had them well spread out so they could not be easily eliminated by one errant artillery or naval strike. The flipside of that was that focusing their power on one area was impossible. Thus, he had the far more common Doppelhorn and IWSP packs in support of the Launchers. This allowed him to provide excellent fire support to the more common Aile and Jet Windams so they could close in and finish off the tanks. In theory, at least.

The Agni cannon nearby the Colonel spoke, and he watched the beam literally shear the turret off a Manticore, a known serious deadly threat in either of its native configurations. Herein the Mendel forces blew their own foot off, the Earth Alliance had access to all military databases of their 'Empire' as per their policies, and a very thorough intelligence book had been written on them and all their main deploy combat units. Not that it was doing much good, except in knowing exactly how badly you were screwed in trying to assault them... (One thing was for sure, the level of technological sophistication of the Mendel forces and their Magi predecessors well exceeded anything ZAFT could come up with except for all-out no-expenses-spared Gundams, much less what the Earth Alliance could produce).

Doppelhorn fire danced back and forth across their lines, striking two times of five a valid target. It was less than horrid seeing his personnel miss that much in a single volley, but the hits were apparently getting to the enemy more than not. A Pilum erupted in flames after taking a hit to the turret collar, which left the tank more or less disarmed but not entirely destroyed. It began to crawl backwards away from the oncoming Windam suits but was unable to get completely out of its fortification before it stopped and slowly rolled back down, the crew likely through dying off from smoke inhalation or or injuries (or both).

"Yeah, we're close enough now!" Captain Peter shouts as he levels the Windam Beam Rifle he had and fires. A hit on of the larger tanks, followed by a series of four more hits as his Gunbarrel striker pack deploys by spiraling out and firing eight shots, with half accuracy. The large tank seemed utterly unaffected by the hits, except for a few smoking spots on the tank where the beams struck.

Lin was extremely surprised by the volume of fire that returned from the enemy tank. Common Earth Alliance logic dictated that a tank need only have one primary gun and maybe a few smaller machine guns, as had been with the evolution of the modern main battle tank. Mendel's armor forces defied that logic expertly, and in this case one tank had five weapons capable of sundering a Mobile Suit, and ports for weapons that might have been range-limited and thus not fired. The ruby-colored laser pulses struck one Windam from a different company, followed closely by a Gauss Rifle slug that ripped the right arm and shoulder clean off the suit as well as stripped off the Aile Striker pack it had. A second machine took only the Gauss Rifle slug, shearing a leg clean off the machine and throwing it wildly behind to crush a tree, and a third machine took a full-on barrage of LRMs from two fifteen-silo missile packs and not one missile missed. A spray of Vulcan intercepted four of the missiles, but the rest tore huge rents in the light Windam frame and armor, and after the last of the salvo struck it collapsed backwards.

Another of the same model but different weapons pods unleashed on the formation as well, dumping into them a single-pulse laser, a large-bore rotary ballistic cannon, a large single missile, and four packs of missiles, two of ten-silo and two of nine-silo, resulting in two of Captain Peter's company being shredded apart as well as two from a different company going down and silent. "Jesus almighty," Captain Park mutters as he raises his beam rifle and begins firing around his mobile suit's shield. As he was firing on the same one that Captain Peter had been shooting, enough hits on the front armor finally gave him a visible blow-through, though at the cost of his shield and actuator damage to his left arm he was able to finally put and end to the tank with enough fire from both himself and the rest of the team.

It was testament to his foes that they missed a lot less than his forces did, but not enough testament to prevent the massive damage a direct hit from the Doppelhorn, IWSP, or Launcher Strikes could cause. He watched as his better fire support Launcher Windam used an industrial building as cover for a few moments, then brought the cannon around the corner and onto target on one of their dreaded Von Luckner. Colonel Park could not understand what their fondness of the design was, since it was so old that everyone and their grandma knew exactly what it was capable of. He would have to ask someone if he could.

The tank that was being aimed at lost its entire turret to the single shot, which completely blew through it and apparently also caused some form of massive electrical discharge, as an arc could be seen jumping from the side of the turret to a bucket on the ground next to the tank trench it was mostly buried in. While there was some cheering, it was short lived as another Von Luckner and a Manticore with the PPC tag-teamed the offending Launcher Windam and turned it into a smoking heap, the pilot killed by a cluster of missiles to the cockpit.

"There! There is the breach point! Move it up!" Colonel Park starts firing at the remaining Von Luckner, before his suit is wildly rocked by an artillery explosion.

"No fucking way, I know I didn't see that right! That tank just jumped sideways 400 meters!" (5)

"I saw it too!"

"Fast little bugger! I can't draw a bead on it!"

"Hit it with the Doppelhorns, see if we can knock it out," Colonel Park says as the tank jumps under his watchful eye. "Jesus, how can we win against tanks that can jump on their own?" he asks as the tank lands another 400 meters farther away and hits the ground running. It was drawing fire away from the others, which Colonel Park immediately realized. "Second, third battalions, shield charge their front! We have them on the run!" He checks his laser rangefinder again, and the result made him smile: 1500 meters to the target zone. They were maneuvering through subdivisions right now, using the houses and trees as cover since Mendel forces were somewhat reluctant to fire on areas that might have civilians.

An artillery shell hammered into a house nearby his location, four houses away, and converted that and the three intervening houses into nothing more than civilian-remnant shrapnel. The proximity of the explosion shredded two of his command platoon, removed the right arm of a third, and knocked his Windam to the ground while disorienting Colonel Park. He came back to proper sense after a moment, though when he checked his head his hand came off bloody from a cut caused by flying shards of LCD monitor. He attempted to move his Mobile Suit by pulling at the controls, but got nothing in response. After two more tries, he pulled the 'mommy' handle.

-x-x-x-

Louie had been watching as the turret on Death's Head, the companion tank to his Red-Eye Rage and the same model, blew out and discharged the gauss rifle electricity through the frame of the tank. While it only appeared visibly to fry the turret and discharge out the side, Louie knew the bulk of that power went through the hull and crew compartment. He had seen a weapon failure like that in a tank once, the electric surge killed the whole crew and fried out its electronics and engine. It was a less than pleasant way to die, especially after it finished killing the crew.

"Who—who's left?" Louie asks.

"Enough to spit at," the Engineer says as he discharges the fire extinguisher at a propellant backfire from the Streak SRM-4.

"Names!" Louie half-shouts. "Target, Windam with Launcher, eleven high, range 1750!" he orders the gunner.

"Gauss up!" the Loader shouts.

"Track! Firing!" The gunner shouts as he pulls back on the triggers. "Away!"

"Target, cease fire" Louie shouts, meaning that they had indeed knocked out the enemy. "Doppelhorn, Eleven high, range 1600, and who do we still have alive?"

"LRMs UP!" the Loader shouts.

"Us, Magic Touch, Holy Shit, Hell's Barmaid, and The Ringmaster," the Engineer shouts.

"LRMs, locked, firing!" the gunner shouts. "Negative impact, his shield took them!"

"Try locking with the Streaks!" _Five of us, they've already killed half of us_? Louie asks within the confines of his mind as he watched a PPC from Holy Shit go downrange and rip the left arm clear off a Windam.

"Negative, streaks not locking!" the Gunner shouts after a moment.

"Gauss up!" the Loader shouts.

"Fire!" Louie shouts.

"Target!" The Gunner shouts, watching as the gauss rifle round blew the head and shoulders clean off the Windam in question.

"We're running out of options, here, boss, shouldn't we get the hell out of here?" the Driver asks.

"If we leave our trench, we're guaranteed dead guaranteed fast. Here we have a chance to take some more of them to hell with us," Louie says.

"You mean, we aren't gonna win?" Lizzie asks.

"Nope, not this time," Louie replies honestly.

"Gauss, LRMs, SRMs are ready, boss, give them one last slapping?" the Loader says.

"Sorry, guys," Louie says. "Sorry, Liz, looks like there's no way out of this one."

"It was fun," she replies dubiously.

"Gunner, Windam with IWSP, dead ahead, range 1450 meters," Louie says as the said IWSP raised the armed shield and began firing the 35mm Gattling at the remaining Pilum (The Ringmaster was its name).

"Once they get within 800 meters, they'll be all over us like stink on shit," the Engineer notes.

"Firing!" the Gunner shouts. At 1400 meters, a fraction of the maximum range of the Gauss rifle, there was no hope of dodging and only slightly more of blocking. The Windam did neither, taking the full brunt of the gauss rifle in the chest; the slug barreled out the back of the suit and sheared the IWSP pack clean off the mounting hardpoints, and in seconds both landed on the ground separate from the other.

"Shit!" Liz shouts. "The tank four down the line from us just went up in a fireball!"

"Damn, that was Holy Shit, I was hoping Willy would last longer," Louie says. "Command, this is 4-Ironside-03, we're in deep shit out here, requesting reinforcements priority one," Louie puts out on the command frequency.

"They caught us with our pants down, Louie," the Galaxy Commander tells him. "Get your team out of there ASAP if possible, send them to hell by the numbers if not." This was heard over the sound of the Streak SRM-4 and the LRM-10 unloading, missiles flying to two separate but nearby mobile suits and ripping limbs and a head off them.

" 'If not' is how it's gonna have to be, honey. They got a whole regiment running down our throats, best range 1100 meters at this time," Louie says.

"Then save me a seat in Hell, Point Commander. I won't be far behind. Galaxy over and out," she concludes.

"This is nuts! Can't we get out of here?" Lizzie asks. The SRM-6 pack up front barked defiance at the enemies, but the missiles completely missed three Windams and nosed into the ground, harmless.

"Nope, sorry," Louie says in a disheartened tone. "We stay, we're dead, we move, we're dead faster." The Gauss Rifle barks defiance at the enemy, turning an Aile Windam into a monument to the Earth Alliance in someone's front yard just over 1000 meters away from the tank.

**WRAAM**, the whole world flashed green-white for a moment in Louie's eyes as the whole tank shook severely, then he looked around to see what was going on around him. The first thing he saw was light through the left side of the tank from the 'fires and pyres' of the other tanks, forward of his turret command seat. Where Lizzie had been was little more than a high-energy scorch mark, her whole console and her whole body annihilated by whatever penetrated the cabin; Louie lamented inside his mind that only the good and the beautiful died as young as she did. All the same, his loader suffered the same fate along with the loading mechanism to ram in the 125-kilogram Gauss Rifle slugs. The scorch ended in the right-side wall of the tank, where it failed to punch through the armor on the other side. The Engineer lost his left hand and part of his left forearm, but he was tying the wound off immediately and only muttering curses about it. Harold had been far enough forward that he was not injured whatsoever.

"Out, everyone out! Our guns are trashed, no sense hanging around!"

"Roger that!" The driver replies. Each crewmember that survived the hit immediately reached for their own personal survival pack, though the driver had to get out on his own the rest of the crew evacuated by the personnel hatch on the right side of the turret.

"What the hell happened?" The Gunner asks, since he was looking through his sights he would not have seen the hit.

"Beam penetrated, cooked Liz and our loader station," Louie says as he hauls himself through the hatch. "We're hiking toward the rear," he says as the four surviving members of the crew assemble outside the right side of the tank.

"Hop on! Fast!" They heard over the external loudspeaker of Hell's Barmaid, the surviving Tokugawa MBT for Louie's star. The tank did not even technically stop as they clamored up onto the deck, and once secured the eight surviving crewmembers of the right half of the line were whisked toward the rear faster than the Windams were advancing.

Louie looked back at his tank and wondered if he would ever have a chance to see it repaired. After all, Magi and Mendel let nothing go to waste, and anythign that was more than half intact like his tank could be repaired rather easily.

-x-x-x-

(Day four, 0541 hours)

Colonel Park looked around the corner of the building he was covering behind, observing the enemy formation to the south. His Windams had punched through the enemy tank line without real challenge, the overrun tactics that the enemy had used in the initial break-in phase had been perfect for for his counterstrike. He had mauled three of the four clusters of a Galaxy with support with little more than a division in total forces, and this not including the artillery that had more or less played hell with them for thirty seconds before it had been erased off the face of the planet. He had the breakthrough, though unlike the typical blitzkrieg he found himself bogged down by a second enemy fortification, a fallback position that his intel had failed to catch on to. Not that there were a huge amount of them to go around, right now, but those few that remained were being a royal pain in the arse.

The cost had been terrible; Colonel Park could only hope that his CO had his shit in gear, enough that they could exploit the breach that Colonel Park had made by using literally three regiments up to get in.

And now, he had to finish off their smaller forces, namely the leftover tank crew, battle armor infantry, and leftover tanks of medium and a few heavies left. There was little hope for them, as they were still significantly outnumbered by Colonel Park's remaining multi-unit-forged regiment, but he could sense they would only get harder to kill the harder he tried. The Colonel knew this would end up on his performance review, he had advanced less than a kilometer in one hour, and technically he was already supposed to be partway to O'Hare Airport instead of still in a field in Buffalo Grove.

"All right, Windams start us off, then the infantry. We hit them with everything we have!" Colonel Park orders. 'Everything' amounted to quite a bit, as he had the supply trains of three Regiments—a whole Division in essence—at his disposal, and he was being very liberal with those supplies. If it worked for them, it would work for him as well.

The Windams began their assault, as they had been rotated out in section to get reloads they had full arsenals. All five of the Launcher Windams had been scratched, as well as most of the Doppelhorn and IWSP, but he still had enough to do the job. The Aile and Jet Windams had been equipped with all the available munitions his force had available, including multipurpose missiles, unguided rockets, and dedicated air-to-ground missiles.

"The final cataclysmic clash," Captain Peter notes from behind and to the right of the Colonel.

"We'll win, but they'll bleed us of another pint before everything is said and done," Colonel Park says. As he said this, the first wave of attack missiles screamed overhead and down among the enemy formation. Explosions threw body parts as far as the infantry lines of the Earth Alliance, though in short order the same was happening in the Earth Alliance lines as missiles from their tanks came back and started impacting on their formations.

Colonel park watched the matter with some fascination. He had never seen something so mechanical as a pitched battle against a dying, desperate foe, as the Windams jumped, flew and swarmed in on the remaining of the fourth Mendel Mechanized Galaxy. The concept of counterattack was out the window; the enemy was doing their best to walk away from this, though by their wild and furious actions Colonel Park could tell they knew there would be no escape. Thus, they were 'trying to take as many of them to hell along with themselves as possible' in Magi parlance.

The remaining tanks were almost out of ammo, with but a few remaining shots for their close-range launchers. Even still, those missiles were playing havoc when combined with the energy weapons that even the tanks carried (the Earth Alliance had summarily been unable to get energy weapons to work properly in a tank, so they gave up until they could capture some of Mendel's weapons) and Colonel Park watched as Windam after Windam slammed into the ground and skidded to a stop, unmoving and unflinching.

More than a few arrived at the enemy line, and some of them even survived long enough to pop off point-blank shots at the enemy armor forces and use their Vulcan guns on the infantry. With the enemy ranks thinning out, Lin Park got to see a phenomenon that he had never even dreamed possible.

"What the hell are those things doing?" Captain Peter asks. He watched as one of the Salamander points climbed up the leg of a nearby Windam and climbed straight up to the chest. When there, the troopers began ripping holes in the armor with their magnetized battle claws as the pilot tried punching them off his Suit. It was horrific to watch as the suit twisted, gyrated and could not dislodge the troops, until one of the Salamanders pulled open the cockpit. It was worse than horrific to watch as the trooper fired his flamer into the suit, with a mere two meters between his arm and the pilot. After a few moments, the pilot jumped clear out of the suit, screaming and flailing all the same, to plummet the ten meters to his sickening death.

"Jesus, sir, we need to get in there!" Captain Peter says. "Those midgets are cutting our suits to shreds!" he shouts as another Windam drops flat, the

"INFANTRY CHARGE!" Colonel Park shouts, waving the infantry forward. Now that the 'armor' (Mobile Suits) were engaging the foe, the Infantry would have less of a problem running the 500 meter gap to get up on the enemy.

The Infantry surged forward as a wave, over 1000 personnel headed into the teeth of 400, some battle armor and tanks remaining. As the Infantry closed, the Battle Armor began firing on them as well as swarming the Mobile Suits, and Colonel Park watched in horror as their machine guns rippled back and forth across the infantry, knocking down whole squads of people at a time. The enemy infantry and leftover crew began firing on them as well, causing even more casualties, though the Earth Alliance troops began firing and continued the charge all the same.

The Grenadiers, infantry forces with heavy weapons for challenging battle armor and the much-detested Armored Marines, found themselves in a welcomed niche this engagement. Rather than being mercilessly cut down by the enemy, it was they who were picking off the Battle Armor troopers, who had substantially less defense per trooper than the Marines. In particular, as the Salamanders dropped off the disabled Windam whose pilot dove to his death rather than roast, , they walked into a veritable wall of RPG rounds and grenade launcher. None of the troopers walked away unscathed; two of the salamanders went down and did not come back up. Two of the survivors fired their inferno missiles at the platoon of Grenadiers, one missile missing, the other striking a trooper and detonating to spread inferno fuel over two squads worth of the team. The screaming was absolutely horrid, hearing troopers coated in a gel more viscous, more flammable than napalm, though the rest of the team maintained their nerve and returned the favor. Another barrage silenced what was left of the Salamanders.

Colonel Park slowed down to review the whole line, and for once he liked what he saw. The Mendel forces were slowly surrendering, by sections, knowing they were outnumbered and (for once in the Earth Alliance's existence) outgunned. The Battle Armor that could jump began retreating, likely ordered to do so by their commander, but the remainder of the troops, foot infantry essentially, surrendered to a man. The surviving hover tanks from earlier fighting, from the fourth cluster (Speedy Gonzales as the cluster was named) were nowhere to be seen, either. That worried Colonel Park to no end, since those shits were fast and very furious, but anywhere but here beat the alternative.

-x-x-x-

(0550 hours)

The dawn light clearly showed what Star Colonel Erika did not want to see.

"Command, Victor-7-5 reporting, what was left of the last line just surrendered. The Earth Alliance has no major resistance between here and O'Hare, except us, sir," she reports on the command-level frequency.

"Understood. Any sign of Galaxy Commander Tira?"

"Aff, she has surrendered along with what looks like a tank crew. Enemy infantry approaching right now," she notes. "Looks like...what the hell?"

"What? Report, Star Colonel," the Century Commander orders.

"Good Gods," Star Colonel Erika replies in shock. "They...they shot them. All of them."

"The Galaxy Commander?"

"Dead, assuredly, I saw the back of her head blow out," Erika mutters in a clinically precise fashion. She got along real well with the now-executed Galaxy Commander. And she was restraining herself from ripple-firing her Hellfire IIM-Block-26A missiles into the scum that did it.

"Very well. Pull your Cluster back to O'Hare and rearm for hunter-killer sortie. We're about to completely unleash the Aero Core on them," he says.

"And send the Marines in with bodybags afterwards, quiaff?" the pilot of her chopper asks.

"Neg, we will not give them that accolade. The vultures will deal with the dead bodies." If Century Commander Rico could sound any colder, how was lost on the Star Colonel.

"All forces, fall back to O'Hare. We hot-rearm and prepare to send them to hell." She had already killed the external feed to the command circuit, leaving only the transmission to her unit, a full wing of VTOL units, which sized the same as a vehicular Cluster of five trinaries.

"Ma'am, they're...doing something," the pilot says.

"What the hell?" She asks the screen. On it, two of the soldiers could be seen to be picking the Galaxy Commander up and dragging her several meters to the side of a mission-killed Tokugawa. After they had her body propped against it with her back against the armor plate that hangs down and around the treads, one of them proceeded to remove her pants. "Oh my fucking Gods, those are some sick-ass bastards," she mutters in her usual I'm-about-to-destroy-something voice.

"Ma'am, we can't let them get away with that shit," the pilot, a guy, says. "You do it, I'll back you up if you're called to Grievance," he adds.

"Thanks," she says as she fires up her targeting laser. She pulls the trigger on one of her missiles and waits for fifteen seconds before turning the laser on, that way nobody would know until it was way the hell too late.

-x-x-x-

Colonel Park was not pleased with Captain Peter and his desire to kill them all so quickly. He wanted to interrogate the crews and especially the officer they found, but by the time he had arrived they were dragging the body of the Galaxy Commander toward a tank. He could guess what was about to happen, of course, he knew Captain Peter's reputation.

"Sir, you don't want a part of this," one of the Infantry says. He was not overtly brandishing his assault rifle, but the threat was clear.

"You're right," he says, knowing that if he tried stopping them he would be killed. He began walking away toward the Mobile Suit that had been disabled by the Salamanders cooking the pilot. As he approached, he thought he heard some form of beeping coming from the cockpit...

**BOOOM**! The Colonel was knocked flat to his face by the passing shockwave, as well as having the back of his left arm flayed open by shrapnel. It was a good thirty seconds before he got up, on the off-chance that another missile or more serious measures were incoming, but nothing else happened until an Infantryman came and dragged him up off the ground.

"Sir, what the hell happened?"

"Missile attack," Lin Park says as he looks back to where Captain Peters had been along with over a platoon of infantry, all ogling the rather voluptuous enemy officer. There were dead bodies strewn all over the place, but for five meters around where the missile impacted, assuredly on the dead body of their fallen officer, there was only char and a crater in the ground. There were some that had actually survived the attack, though those capable of actually using a weapon drew a knife or pistol and ended their tortured existence. The Medics only got to three of them to actually save.

"You have your justice, Mendel," Colonel park says toward the impact point on the side of the tank. "Gods forgive us all," he concludes before he begins walking toward the rear lines.

* * *

Author's Chapter Afterword:

This was not an easy chapter to complete, and not because Mendel lost this one. It is longer than the prior ones, and a bit more complex in both terrain and action. In the end, I think I like the result, as the 'good' guys do not always win the battle, and it shows you how a concentrated defense can be broken by a blitzkrieg-style attack when used properly. This is real-world tactics meets the often-fantastic battles of Gundam, because in real life battles are not short and inconclusive unless the commanders pitching them are complete dumbasses.

As I stated at the top of the chapter, this is actually based on real-world terrain. Mapquest is a good friend for planning out campaigns in this respect, using IRL tactics and conversion of 1 hex 100 meters. This was based on Buffalo Grove, a suburb of Chicago, the field immediately south of McHenry Road and east of S. Buffalo Grove Road. The open fields would make a good Kazerne for tanks, so they do not interfere with the roads and personal property too much, though such policies go out the window when the shooting starts. The second wave of shooting happened in the area of West Dundee Road and S. Buffalo Grove Road, which is south and slightly west of the prior-stated fields.

I am still taking input on units, vehicles, 'mechs, armor, battle armor, you name it. If you want it showcased in this story, send me the specs and a person sufficiently crazy and unique enough to pilot it, and it shall be done.

Next Up: with Mendel's northern line breached, the Aero forces have to clean out the invaders for the ground forces to come in and shore up the line. No rest for the wicked of either side, people.

* * *

Review Replies:

Three reviewers in, thank you all for the accolades.

**Drakensis**: Thank you for the accolade, Ninyu was an interesting character to write out. I don't normally do the silent, angst-ridden types, but that was definitely a fun one to do. And the design is a helluva design when you get down to it.

**Knives91**: The Marines are not through yet, comrade. More ground action is still to come. Stay tuned, it may be a while but the next chapter is already in the planning.

**MrEmperor**: Thank you for the review, comrade. This is actually in the Flight of the Jokers Wild timeline, starting roughly during chapter 11 and progressing to the end of the Flight series. There will be battles beyond the campaign in Chicago, of course, but they will be significantly different from what you see here.

* * *

The Grip Sheet

No gripes from prior chapters.

* * *

Footnotes:

(1): VT means **V**ariable **T**ime, which is a type of artillery shell that is set off above a target zone instead of contact with the ground or object. It is far more useful against personnel or buildings than it is against a hardened target.

(2): Division in terms of the Magi unit structure refers to all units comprised of a classification, such as the TechStriker Division comprising all mechanized units such as tanks, aero, battlemechs, gundams, mobile suits, dropships, jumpships, and warships. The other three official Divisions are the Magi (comprising all primarily mage-trained forces), Bladesmen (comprising all primarily infantry forces), and Commando (comprising all primarily special-forces units in the Empire). Division in terms of Earth Alliance forces refers to the classic force structure unit size of a Division, which is 2 to 4 brigades of forces and usually comprises ten thousand to twenty thousand personnel.

(3): **I**mproved **C**luster **M**unition, the Earth Alliance analog to Mendel's wildly successful Cluster munitions. Has the same damage and area as a Thumper Cluster Shell.

(4): Careful Aim rule from Battletech 4th Edition Maximum Tech, combined with the Extreme Range firing rules from same book. Extreme range shots are very difficult to make, but not impossible and only mildly difficult for ace pilots. Using the Careful Aim technique makes Extreme range more bearable.

(5): Level three construction rules: Tanks with Jump Jets. As the Infamous Star League Kanga hovertank proves, it is possible but exceedingly rare. In this case, it is the Shocktrooper, a medium tank designed to provide maneuverability in armor form. TRO listed below.

* * *

Murphy's Laws Applicable to this chapter:

(Both): Tanks draw fire. A lot of it. It does not behoove the infantryman to hide behind one

(Mendel): Whenever you have plenty of ammo, you never miss. Whenever you are low on ammo, you can't hit the broad side of a barn

(Mendel): If you think you don't need something for your combat load for an OP PLAN, you'll probably wish you had it after the shit hits the fan in combat

* * *

TRO SECTION:

**BattleTech Vehicle Technical Readout**

**Type/Model**: Von Luckner IIM VNL-KC66G (C3i)

**Tech: **Mixed Tech / 3060

**Config: **Tracked Vehicle

**Rules: **Level 3, Standard design

**Mass: **75 tons

**Power Plant: **225 TelStar (MM) Fusion (C)

**Cruise Speed: **32.4 km/h

**Maximum Speed: **54.0 km/h

**Armor Type: **(Various Manufacturers) Hvy Ferro-Fibrous

**Armament:**  
1 (Various Manufacturers) Gauss Rifle (C)  
1 Delta Dart CT LRM 10 (C)  
1 Xigon "Precision Touch" Streak SRM 4 (C)  
1 Xigon "Touch" SRM 6 (C)  
1 (Various Manufacturers) Flamer (C)  
1 Hessian Systems Commadant Improved C³ CPU (IS)

**Manufacturer: **Various **  
Location: **Various  
**Communications System: **Hessian Systems TalkBack **  
Targeting & Tracking System: **Hessian Systems Deadeye w. C3I

**Overview:**

The original Von Luckner Heavy Tank design was built by HartfordCo Industries, and it served as a terrifying reminder that a tank is a weapon not to be ignored. With the coming of the Magi and their advanced technology, the Von Luckner received a major refit with the best available technology to the Magi, a mix of the Inner Sphere and Clan domains that converted this feared relic of the Star League into a true nightmare of mobile warfare.

Thus was born the VNL-KC66 series, which comes in more than one weapons configuration

**Capabilities:**

The Von Luckner IIM, KC66G/C3i variant of the Von Luckner trades in its famed short-range punch for a longer fang. The primary weapon of the G variant is a Gauss Rifle, manufactured by multiple companies to fill the need for this tank in an efficient fashion. It is not uncommon to see three Von Luckner parked side to side and each would have a different Gauss Rifle. In any case, the Gauss Rifle trades in a quarter of the A variant's damage for a grossly longer standard range profile, 2300 meters as opposed to 1200 meters. It is not unheard of for a single Von Luckner G to completely eradicate a Light 'Mech or MS outside of 1500 meters. With 24 rounds of ammo ready for the main gun, a long battle life is assured for the unit in typical deploy conditions.

The other hallmark weapons of the Von Luckner, the SRMs and LRMs, were maintained from the original and upgraded to their Clan-spec counterparts. The LRM launcher is produced on dozens of worlds by Delta Dart, using the Clan Tech pattern to reduce the weight by half for the system. In the same fashion, Xigon produces the SRM systems, the 'Touch' SRM-6 and the 'Precision Touch' Streak SRM-4 across multiple worlds to provide the necessary components to roll the tanks out promptly and in large quantity. The LRM rack carries enough missiles for 24 salvos, the Streak-4 carries enough for 25 salvos, and the SRM-6 enough to fire thirty times consecutively.

Though it may seem a rather backwards waste of space and heat sinks, the flamer component mounted coaxially to the main gun is actually a very useful tool when deployed properly, as it can start fires for cooking, for fighting forest fires, annihilating infantry, and even as a reserve close-range weapon against 'mechs. Like the Gauss Rifle, the flamer is typically manufactured by subcontractors in a vast variety of models and names, though one of the more common flamers is the Zippo Phoenix Flamer.

The C3i variant of the Tank comes ready with a C3i module that can lash up to a star's tactical net and provide or consume telemetry to or from the rest of the unit, improving the whole force's chances of hitting and surviving. The gold standard among the Magi for this classification of equipment is still the Hessian Systems Commandant, which has been upgraded over the years to expand its capabilities. A palisade of Von Luckner tanks with a competent forward scout can literally shred oncoming lances of 'mechs with almost no risk to themselves.

For defense, the original Von Luckner mounted eleven tons of standard armor. On the IIM version, one of the SRM-6 launchers was dropped in favor of more armor, a total of 18 tons of Heavy Ferro-Fibrous armor protects the tank for literally double the armor protection of the original. It is often said that it would take five direct hits from a large-bore autocannon to completely breach the front armor, all the while the opposing 'mech is getting chewed up by the tank and its starmates.

The electronics on the machine are completely provided by Hessian Systems, which has more than enough manufacturing to provide for all the various manufacturers to turn these units out at full pace. The TalkBack comms system is a robust multi-tier communication system capable of doing up to basic Cluster command functions. The DeadEye targeting system is used throughout many designs of the Magi, and is reknown for being able to shoot the top end off a beer can with a Medium laser and leave the lower half of the can intact (though most crews consider this a waste of a perfectly good beer, since the heat from the passing laser flashes the remaining beer to steam almost instantly).

**Battle History:**

The battle history of the Von Luckner IIM is a long and bloody one, riddled with both success and defeat. Lore and legend speak of vehicles and their exemplary crews who challenged the mightiest of enemies of the Empire and walked (drove) away from the battle, their foe vanquished and left smoldering in pieces.

In one battle during the Quarter War, a single Von Luckner was observed by Illyaris forces to have taken thirty-seven separate weapons hits varying from LRMs to ultra autocannons, and still be combat functional. The Magi know this tank as 'Thunder From The Hills,' a RAC/10 variant Von Luckner IIM that annihilated three light mechs and crippled two more, killing two of the pilots while it held a chokepoint in jungle terrain for its team to retreat to the starport on planet. The tank was found posthumously after the planet was retaken, halfway to the starport itself before artillery had finally brought it to a halt.

**Variants:**

There are multiple production variants of the Von Luckner, though they all boil down to two options: main gun and C3i or not. After the beginning of the First Star League, though, the non-C3 variants were dropped in favor of more standardized capabilities and the older tanks were refitted with the appropriate equipment. Models with heavy autocannons, Gauss Rifles, LB-X autocannons, Ultra Medium autocannons, and even Rotary autocannons have been seen in deploy.

**Notable Vehicles & Crews:**

Thunder In The Hills (TC Jim Dracos)  
Thunder In The Hills was involved in the fighting on Avernus 602, where the TC decided to hold a critical junction in jungle area while Magi forces retreated from the planet. As the enemy pursued the convoy headed for the safety of merchant ships headed off planet, Thunder swung its massive Rotary AC/10 into action, using slow-fire tactics and limiting terrain to lay down a barrage on approaching forces of Illyaris light and mediuum 'mechs. Alone and unsupported, the crew of the Von Luckner IIM killed more than its tonnage in lighter enemy chassis and effectively stymied the pursuit itself. After piling a substantial amount of enemy machines in the roadway, Thunder made for the starport itself to clear off the planet. An enemy Naga closed on the machine and shelled it from outside the autocannon range, disabling the tracks and eventually blowing out the fusion reactor on the machine. The crew of the tank did not survive the engagement due to spall from the reactor blowout killing them.

**Deployment**

The Von Luckner is deployed far and wide among the Magi's armored forces, providing stalwart punch and defense appropriate of a heavy tank of this nature. Some Galaxies of armor forces have whole trinaries dedicated to the Von Luckner, and these formations are often the most feared of the unit. Serving on the crew of a Von Luckner is considered a distinction, as the tank carries a hefty reputation that is often upheld by the elite crews that pilot it.

**BATTLETECH SPECIAL RULES**

Depending on the era of the battle, the C3i system will have the ability to lash up to a different amount of units. Prior to the first Star League, the capability extended only as far as the standard C3i rules. After the first century of the Star League, the c3 systems could link to a maximum of ten units. At the beginning of the Quarter War, this number increased to 15. Prior to Operation Thunderbolt, this number increased again to 20 units. At the beginning of the Second Star League and the beginning of the existence of the Jokers Wild, this capability is two Trinaries of battlemechs, or a trinary of vehicles.

* * *

**Type/Model**: Von Luckner IIM VNL-KC66G (C3i)

**Mass: **75 tons

**Const. Options: **Fractional Accounting

Equipment:  
Items, Mass

**Internal Structure: **40 pts Standard  
0, 7.50

**Engine: **225 Fusion  
0, 10.00

**Shielding & Trans Equip:**  
0, 5.00

**Cruise MP: **3

**Flank MP: **5

**Heat Sinks: **10 Single  
0, 0.00

**Cockpit & Controls:**  
0, 3.75

**Crew: **5 Members  
0, 0.00

**Turret Equipment:**  
0, 1.70

**Armor Factor: **358 pts Hvy Ferro-Fibrous (IS)  
3, 18.04

* * *

Internal **Structure**

Armor **Value**

**Front: **8, 100

**Left / Right Sides: **8, 70/70

**Rear:** 8, 38

**Turret: **8, 80

* * *

Weapons & Equipment:  
Loc, Heat, Ammo  
Items, Mass

1 Gauss Rifle (C)  
Turret, 0, 24  
2, 15.00

1 LRM 10 (C)  
Turret, 0, 24  
2, 4.50

1 Streak SRM 4 (C)  
Turret, 0, 25  
2, 3.00

1 SRM 6 (C)  
Front, 0, 30  
2, 3.50

1 Flamer (C)  
Turret, 3, 0  
1, 0.50

1 Improved C³ CPU (IS)  
Body, 0, 0  
1, 2.50

CASE Equipment:  
Body, 0, 0  
0, 0.00

**TOTALS:**

**3 heat**

**13 items**

**74.99 Tons**

**Items & Tons Left:**

7 Items

.01 Tons

* * *

Calculated Factors:

**Total Cost: **5,779,375 C-Bills

**Battle Value: **1,088 (+201 for C³)

**Cost per BV: **5,311.93

**Weapon Value: **1,725 / 1,613 (Ratio 1.59 / 1.48)

**Damage Factors: **SRDmg 32; MRDmg 19; LRDmg 10

**BattleForce2:**

**MP:** 3T, **Armor/Structure:** 0 / 13

**Damage PB/M/L:** 4/4/2, **Overheat:** 0

**Class:** GH, **Point Value:** 11

**Specials: **c3i

* * *

**Created with HeavyMetal Vee**

**BattleTech Vehicle Technical Readout**

**Type/Model**:

Manticore IIM MNT-06L

**Tech: **Mixed Tech / 3050

**Config: **Tracked Vehicle

**Rules: **Level 3, Standard design

**Mass: **65 tons

**Power Plant: **260 Pitban Fusion (C)

**Cruise Speed: **43.2 km/h

**Maximum Speed: **64.8 km/h

**Armor Type: **Durallex Super Hvy Ferro-Fibrous

**Armament:**  
1 Large Pulse Laser (C)  
1 Streak LRM 10 (C)  
1 Streak SRM 6 (C)  
1 Anti-Missile System (C)  
2 SRM 4s(C)  
4 Machine Guns(C)

**Manufacturer: **Defiance Industries

**Location: **Hesperus

**Communications System: **TharHes Muse 54-58K

**Targeting & Tracking System: **TharHes Targitrack w. Artemis FCS

Included as reference. The Manufacturer data is still partially stock still, though some Manticore IIM are still made by Defiance Industries.

* * *

Type/Model: Manticore IIM MNT-06L

**Mass: **65 tons

**Const. Options: **Fractional Accounting

Equipment:  
Items, Mass

**Internal Structure: **35 pts Standard  
0, 6.50

**Engine: **260 Fusion  
0, 13.50

**Shielding & Trans Equip:  
**0, 6.75

**Cruise MP: **4

**Flank MP: **6

**Heat Sinks: **10 Single  
0, 0.00

**Cockpit & Controls:  
**0, 3.25

**Crew: **5 Members  
0, 0.00

**Turret Equipment:  
**0, 1.40

**Sponson Turret:  
**0, 0.30

**Armor Factor: **203 pts Hvy Ferro-Fibrous (IS)  
3, 10.23

* * *

**Internal Structure**

**Armor Value**

**Front: **7, 60

**Left / Right Sides: **7, 40/40

**Rear: **7, 23

**Turret: **7, 40

* * *

Weapons & Equipment:  
Loc, Heat, Ammo  
Items, Mass

1 Large Pulse Laser (C)  
Turret, 10, 0  
1, 6.00

1 Streak LRM 10 (C)  
Turret, 0, 12  
2, 6.00

1 Streak SRM 6 (C)  
Turret, 0, 15  
2, 4.00

1 Anti-Missile System (C)  
Front, 0, 44  
2, 2.33

1 SRM 4 (C)  
RtSpon, 0, 25  
2, 2.00

2 Machine Guns (C)  
RtSpon, 0, (0)  
2, 0.50

1 SRM 4 (C)  
LfSpon, 0, (0)  
1, 1.00

2 Machine Guns (C)  
LfSpon, 0, 100  
3, 1.00

CASE Equipment:  
Body, 0, 0  
0, 0.00

**TOTALS:**

**10 Heat**

**18 Items**

**64.76 Tons**

**Items & Tons Left:**

0 Items

.24 Tons

* * *

Calculated Factors:

**Total Cost: **4,031,417 C-Bills

**Battle Value: **1,090

**Cost per BV: **3,698.55

**Weapon Value: **1,703 / 1,412 (Ratio 1.56 / 1.30)

**Damage Factors: **SRDmg 39; MRDmg 22; LRDmg 10

**BattleForce2:**

**MP:** 4T, **Armor/Structure:** 0 / 8

**Damage PB/M/L:** 6/5/2, **Overheat:** 0

**Class:** GH, **Point Value:** 11

* * *

**Created with HeavyMetal Vee**

**BattleTech Vehicle Technical Readout**

**Type/Model**: Rangemaster RGL-06

**Tech: **Mixed Tech / 3060

**Config: **Tracked Vehicle

**Rules: **Level 3, Standard design

**Mass: **65 tons

**Power Plant: **195 TelStar Fusion (C)

**Cruise Speed: **32.4 km/h

**Maximum Speed: **54.0 km/h

**Armor Type: **Hessian Systems Heavy DiamondWeave w. CASE Hvy Ferro-Fibrous

**Armament:**  
1 Optifree Double-tap Large Pulse Laser (C)  
1 Raytheon Max Range ELRM-15 (MR)(C)  
1 Delta Dart CT LRM 10 (C)  
1 Xigon "Touch" SRM 4 (C)  
1 Hessian Systems Commadant Improved C³ CPU (IS)

**Manufacturer: **Master Arms  
**Location: **Archenland (Master Arms)  
**Communications System: **Telstar 00 w. C3I  
**Targeting & Tracking System: **Telstar 00 w. C3I

Included for reference. This is a completely custom design, intended for standoff fire by assistance of a close-in scout. The price tag is also right for what a commander gets, as well.

* * *

Type/Model:

Rangemaster RGL-06

**Mass: **65 tons

**Const. Options: **Fractional Accounting

Equipment:  
Items, Mass

**Internal Structure: **35 pts Standard  
0, 6.50

**Engine: **195 Fusion  
0, 8.00

**Shielding & Trans Equip:  
**0, 4.00

**Cruise MP: **3

**Flank MP: **5

**Heat Sinks: **10 Single  
0, 0.00

**Cockpit & Controls:  
**0, 3.25

**Crew: **5 Members  
0, 0.00

**Turret Equipment:  
**0, 1.60

**Armor Factor: **300 pts Hvy Ferro-Fibrous (IS)  
3, 15.12

* * *

**Internal Structure**

**Armor Value**

**Front: **7, 80

**Left / Right Sides: **7, 60/60

**Rear: **7, 40

**Turret: **7, 60

* * *

Weapons & Equipment:  
Loc, Heat, Ammo  
Items, Mass

1 Large Pulse Laser (C)  
Turret, 10, 0  
1, 6.00

1 ELRM-15 (MR) (C)  
Turret, 0, 24  
2, 11.50

1 LRM 10 (C)  
Turret, 0, 24  
2, 4.50

1 SRM 4 (C)  
Front, 0, 25  
2, 2.00

1 Improved C³ CPU (IS)  
Body, 0, 0  
1, 2.50

CASE Equipment:  
Body, 0, 0  
0, 0.00

**TOTALS:**

**10 Heat**

**11 Items**

**64.97 Tons**

**Items & Tons Left:**

7 Items

.03 Tons

* * *

Calculated Factors:

**Total Cost: **5,957,325 C-Bills

**Battle Value: **1,121 (+231 for C³)

**Cost per BV: **5,314.3

**Weapon Value: **1,860 / 1,860 (Ratio 1.66 / 1.66)

**Damage Factors: **SRDmg 24; MRDmg 22; LRDmg 16

**BattleForce2:**

**MP:** 3T, **Armor/Structure:** 0 / 11

**Damage PB/M/L:** 3/3/3, **Overheat:** 0

**Class:** GH, **Point Value:** 11

**Specials: **c3i

* * *

**Created with HeavyMetal Vee**

**BattleTech Vehicle Technical Readout**

**Type/Model: **Silence Glaive Prime

**Tech: **Mixed Tech / 3060

**Config: **Tracked Omni Vehicle

**Rules: **Level 3, Standard design

**Mass: **175 tons

**Power Plant: **350 Light Fusion (IS)

**Cruise Speed: **21.6 km/h

**Maximum Speed: **32.4 km/h

**Armor Type: **Hvy Ferro-Fibrous

**Armament:**  
1 Improved C³ CPU (IS)  
1 Grenade Launcher (C)  
1 ER Large Laser (C)  
1 Rotary AC/10 (UK)(C)  
2 Adv. Tact. Msl. 9s(C)  
2 LRM 10s(C)  
1 Thunderbolt 15 (MR)(C)  
1 Angel ECM Suite (C)  
1 Active Probe (C)

**Manufacturer: **(Unknown)  
**Location: **(Unknown)  
**Communications System: **(Unknown)  
**Targeting & Tracking System: **(Unknown)

Included for reference. If the Von Luckner IIM made the Negaverse 'mechwarriors shake in their boots, these tanks made them crap their pants. The armor may be comparable over the given protection areas, but the arsenal is far larger than the Von Luckner. This tank is commonly capable of threatening Assault Omnimechs, especially in numbers.

* * *

Type/Model: Silence Glaive Prime

**Mass: **175 tons

**Const. Options: **Fractional Accounting

Equipment:  
Items, Mass

**Internal Structure: **126 pts Standard  
0, 35.00

**Engine: **350 Light Fusion  
1, 22.13

**Shielding & Trans Equip:  
**0, 11.07

**Cruise MP: **2

**Flank MP: **3

**Heat Sinks: **12 Single  
0, 2.00

**Cockpit & Controls:  
**0, 8.75

**Crew: **12 Members  
0, 0.00

**Turret Equipment (Locked):  
**0, 5.00

**Armor Factor: **595 pts Hvy Ferro-Fibrous (IS)  
3, 29.99

* * *

**Internal Structure**

**Armor Value**

**Front: **18, 100

**Front L / R Sides: **18, 75/75

**Rear L / R Sides: **18, 75/75

**Rear, **18, 80

**Turret: **18, 115

* * *

Weapons & Equipment:  
Loc, Heat, Ammo  
Items, Mass

1 Improved C³ CPU (IS)  
Body, 0, 0  
1, 2.50

1 Grenade Launcher (C)  
Rear, 0, (1)  
1, 0.50

1 ER Large Laser (C)  
Turret, 12, 0  
1, 4.00

1 Rotary AC/10 (UK) (C)  
Turret, 0, 60  
2, 20.00

2 Adv. Tact. Msl. 9S (C)  
Turret, 0, 35  
3, 15.00

2 LRM 10s (C)  
Turret, 0, 36  
3, 8.00

1 Thunderbolt 15 (MR) (C)  
Turret, 0, 12  
2, 8.50

1 Angel ECM Suite (C)  
Body, 0, 0  
1, 1.50

1 Active Probe (C)  
Body, 0, 0  
1, 1.00

CASE Equipment:  
Body, 0, 0  
0, 0.00

**TOTALS:**

**12 Heat**

**19 Items**

**174.94 Tons**

**Items & Tons Left:**

21 Items

.06 Tons

* * *

Calculated Factors:

**Total Cost: **74,592,708 C-Bills

**Battle Value: **2,532 (+580 for C³)

**Cost per BV: **29,460.0

**Weapon Value: **5,435 / 5,435 (Ratio 2.15 / 2.15)

**Damage Factors: **SRDmg 85; MRDmg 64; LRDmg 24

**BattleForce2:**

**MP:** 2T, **Armor/Structure:** 0 / 24

**Damage PB/M/L:** 13/12/11, **Overheat:** 0

**Class:** GA, **Point Value:** 25

**Specials: **omni, ecm, c3i, prb

* * *

**Created with HeavyMetal Vee**


	5. Death From Above

(Chapter 05: Death From Above)

(Day four, 0630)

"Today, at 0400, the Earth Alliance began a full-court press against our forces, on all three prior assault vectors, with the intent of tying up our reinforcements and heavy ground forces," the Star Colonel of intelligence and analysis begins his part of the briefing for the day. "They succeeded; what appeared to be a heavy wave assault against the positions in Naperville that we've already repulsed one good assault from came under another heavy blitz. Star Captain Hrolfsen definitely put paid to them, enough so that his Century Commander gave him a meritorious field promotion to Star Colonel about an hour ago, but he had to use up four of the Trinaries of Heavy MS reinforcements we had ready. The remainder went south to their main attack vectors in the south suburbs, leaving us with veritably no reinforcements available for another day. At 0420, a fourth attack vector opened up on us, this time coming south from Wisconsin, the Earth Alliance forty-second Airborne Division, a unit comprised of Windams and their support personnel.

The projector view shifted to a map of the Chicagoland area. "They weighted their assault here, at Buffalo Grove, where we had a whole galaxy of armor spread across twenty kilometers of front, waiting for them. As of right now, the Fourth Mendel Mechanized has been all but annihilated, the remnant forces reorganized into a Cluster, most of which is hover tanks, not any really serious firepower by anyone's standard. Now, at this time, the enemy appears to know we're going to hit back and they are digging in as we speak. Over to Century Commander Rico," the Star Colonel concludes to some murmurs from the crowd. Everyone knew parts of the situation they had heard from others in the unit, but now they knew the totality of the situation. And it was not pleasant, even from an aerospace standpoint.

Century Commander Rico steps up to the lectern and adjusts the microphone. "I'm going to make this short and sweet, people. I'm pissed off, NCA (1) is royally pissed off, and we have orders to do what we need to un-fuck this situation. The Earth Alliance just breached our lines here, Buffalo Grove, and appears ready to head south for this airport, in theory to cut off our logistics and cripple us. Though losing O'Hare will knock quite a bit of our logistics out, it will not completely cripple our forces," Century Commander Rico begins his briefing to the combined aerospace forces of Mendel's Chicago campaign. "What's pissing us off, however, is the way they are treating POWs and civilians, they are going right down through the old Nazi SS handbook, rape, murder, torture, you name it they are doing it. As far as I am concerned, it is time to clean house."

"Nasty mother-fuckers, can't we do something about them?" A Spectre pilot asks.

"Dropships can park anywhere, including on top of the White House, so they lose strategically," one of the Star Commanders under Star Colonel Erika notes. "Can't we use that to our advantage?"

"Exactly, but losing O'Hare is more than just losing easy logistics and transport. It is a loss of face Mendel will not tolerate. Our orders are to protect the airport at all costs, and to eliminate all forces that participated in the breaching action. If they are dezgra enough to allow this, they deserve it," and Rico indicates the screen over his left shoulder. The gun-camera footage that Star Colonel Erika had brought back of her one unauthorized but commended missile attack on that recon sweep was playing. Just then...

"Aww, fucking nasty! Tell me you shot those assholes and destroyed the body to protect her honor!"

The answer came moments later as the missile struck the tank immediately above the head of the slain and violated Galaxy Commander. The explosion threw body parts for hundreds of meters in every direction, and only those that were more than thirty metes away actually survived to tell about it.

"We got porked, ladies and gentlemen, no two ways about it," Rico notes as he turns off the projector. "They pressed us south and east an hour before they hammered on our northern exposure, and with our reinforcements gone south to clean up there, we had nothing to spare up here. Now we have to kick them out of Buffalo Grove. Pay or play time, ladies and gentlemen."

"Yes sir!" One of the Fireball pilots shouts.

"Your mission is as follows: In support of a full Marine and Mobile Suit assault to shore up the area left open by the demise of the Fourth Mechanized, all aerospace and VTOL forces will immediately begin a sweep and sanitize strike north and north-west from O'Hare. If it is Earth Alliance, kill it, no questions asked." A murmur came up from the group; such policies were almost never ordered in modern military operations. "You question it, ladies and gentlemen?"

"Sir, this level of force...it is unjustified."

"Any of you who have issues with this order can leave your wings on this table here and go find a cargo-frame to operate. As per orders from Division Commander Wayne Centara, we are no longer allowed to make a distinction between Blue Cosmos and the Earth Alliance. Through field intelligence gathered here and other assets, we now can confirm Blue Cosmos controls the Earth Alliance as an attempt at legitimacy. Therefore, the outstanding Trial of Annihilation against Blue Cosmos now applies to the Earth Alliance. There will be no more leniency for their forces. You will annihilate them or I want to know why, Flight Officer," Century Commander Rico concludes very coldly.

"Sir, Aff, Sir," the chastised Flight Officer replies immediately.

"Normal Magi protocols for the use of Trial of Annihilation apply. Only clearly surrendered forces with no hostiles in proximity will be taken alive. Armor units will be attacked at least once to verify mission kill and noted appropriately on C3. No civilians will be targeted unless they present a clear threat to other civilians or Mendel personnel. This is not a full Clan-style Annihilation, so keep those rules in mind. Anything else is discretionary."

"Yes sir!" One of the pilots of the Spectre IIM units shouts in response.

"One last thing. Our objective is strategic and a matter of honor. Do not give them a break whatsoever. Send them to hell." (2)

"SEYLA!" The whole assembled flight crew chants.

"Dismissed, get airborne and go whoop gratuitous portions of ass," Century Commander Rico concludes.

"For fallen comrades!" Star Colonel Erika half-shouts as she stands up to attention.

"SEYLA!" The whole crowd chants back.

-x-x-x-

"They've pulled all their air forces back to O'Hare?" Colonel Park asks. "Oh, good God, here they come," he says without much in the way of urgency but all the dire implication still got through to his remaining officers.

"What, sir?"

"Since they know what happened after we won in the second skirmish, they will 'sanitize' this area of all Earth Alliance personnel. Don't expect them to be taking much more in the way of prisoners, guys, we've blown our leniency."

"What? Why?" One of the purely military officers in his ranks asks.

"Why? Simple. Rape is considered an immediate execution offense in Magi lands, no questions asked. You get caught with your crank in a chick—or a guy—that orders you to stop, you can expect to get your head blown off by the biggest gun available. Violating the corpse of one of their Galaxy Commanders for 'shits and giggles' on the part of Blue Cosmos may have just cost us all our lives. They will definitely know that Blue Cosmos controls the Earth Alliance now, and there will be no escaping their annihilation any more. 'For the preservation of our blue and pure world' my ass," Colonel Park spat his contempt of their sheer stupidity.

"What makes you think they will win?" A dangerous voice asks from behind.

"Don't be stupid, General," Colonel Park says. "They know what was happening. They probably have hundreds of field reports of your Blue Cosmos depredations. You might as well have your forces replace their EA insignia with Blue Cosmos insignia, because that's what it means to Mendel right now. And do not think for a moment they will let this shit slide because you can 'somehow' force a surrender. You don't have any weapons big enough to force a surrender," Colonel Park declares coldy.

"I have nukes being trucked up here from Fort Bliss, should be arriving within the hour," the General replies smugly. "They will think twice when we threaten to turn Chicago into a smoking crater," he adds with almost an evil gloat. "Now, what were you saying about protecting our blue and pure world?"

"By wiping Chicago off the map? Good God, we are our own worst enemy," Colonel Park notes. Before anything else could be said, the ground heaved underfoot from heavy impacts, likely suborbital bombardment. The Warships _Mjolnr_ and _Nirvana Celeste_ were definitely earning their keep in this campaign, mostly by blowing the hell out of ground-based targets in support of the invasion forces. The Earth Alliance had precisely zero weapons capable of threatening either of the superdreadnoughts, and they knew it.

"Colonel! Mendel's ship just bombarded supply convoys to the south!" One of the radio officers reports. "They think it was the special supplies from the south!"

"You were saying something about nuking Chicago?"

"I will get more nukes, we have stockpiles of them everywhere," the General replies in a frustrated tone. "The Chairman has authorized extreme measures to get rid of this infestation. We will do whatever it takes, and our analysis shows the only way to completely get rid of them is by nuclear device."

The radio trooper with the General picks up the handset on his portable satellite phone. "Sir, we have a situation," he says after acknowledging the transmission.

"What?" the General asks angrily.

"Fort Bliss...they completely annihilated it and everything around it for five hundred meters with a suborbital barrage. They're also striking every hardened nuclear weapons bunker we have east to west. NORAD thinks they'll finish the last one at Oceania in ten minutes."

"Remember, General, they have nuclear weapons as well, and their procedures for using them are a lot less stringent than ours. And those one-gigaton shells they have will turn the whole of North America into a smoking crater, not just Chicago." The look on the General's face clearly stated he had forgotten that thought. "Yeah, fat good it does to protect this blue and pure world when there is nobody left on it to protect. Anyways, sir, you here for something?"

"I'm here to inform you that your next objective is to move to and take O'Hare before their forces rearm and can drive you back," the general notes, his attitude now soured courtesy of losing his trump, the nuclear arms he was counting on to resolve this matter in Earth Alliance favor.

"Can't be done, sir. No way I can get my forces that far forward that quickly. Mendel will go through my flanks like a chainsaw if I blitzed the airport."

"If you wait here, you're dead as well," a Colonel in Signal Corps replies. This immediately caused a reaction in most of Colonel Park's remaining subordinates, much akin to what a cat does when confronted by a larger dog.

"If I remain here, I have a fighting chance of holding this position, General. My men are digging in right now, if you want to you can leapfrog other forces past mine but if we move in the open right now we're dead men, plain and simple. My forces can't take a running battle in the open right now, we might survive from prepared positions and fortifications." The Colonel looks to the radio station in his command tent. "Radio, what's the status on those last Launcher packs and the EM Rifles? We're gonna need them when Mendel brings their air forces in, Lieutenant."

"Aye, sir, they are in route, ETA three hours from stores."

"They won't give us three hours, they'll probably be here in the next sixty minutes," Colonel Park notes. "Radio three, status of the front line?"

"Finishing digging in and hunkering down right now, Colonel, ten minutes."

"Make it a fast ten minutes," Colonel Park orders.

"Colonel, I'm ordering you to move your forces out to assault the airport," the General replies.

"Not happening, General, I'm not throwing my forces away like that," Colonel Park replies. "If you're looking for glory, go sacrifice someone else's force to do it."

"That was an order, Colonel," the sound of a nine millimeter pistol coming off safety was more than enough to get the attention of just about everyone in the room. Lin Park looked up from the map he was reading over to literally stare down the barrel of an Earth Alliance officer's pistol.

"General!" One of Colonel Park's subordinates half-shouts, which did exactly what he intended. The pistol changed aimpoint away from the Colonel as the General and his escort looked toward the half-shouter. **BRRRRRRRRTT**, the sound of the weapon was less of a nominal machine gun sound as it was more like a loud tearing, as the Rorynex PDW he had 'acquired' from a dead Mendel tank gunner had an insanely high rate of fire. The officer had walked the burst across both of them at chest level, literally putting ten rounds into their bodies each. Both the General and his Colonel escort were clinically dead before they hit the ground.

"Major—"

The Major that had done the shooting moved to the open flap of the tent and saw— "Bingo," he mutters as he sights up the driver of the General's staff car. Before the Corporal could even turn the car's engine over his head became a bloody mess as five rounds struck him in the head, neck and shoulders.

"Major Pearson, what the hell—" Colonel Park begins, but stops.

"Better him than the whole unit, sir," the Major says as he switches out magazines and retains the partial he had in the weapon. (3)

"He has a point," the radio officer nearest to the Colonel replies.

"Radio, issue a warning to Command that General Bligh was killed by friendly fire, indeterminate source at this time, and that my Division is hunkering down for an incoming enemy assault. We continue as if the General never showed up. Sergeant McBride, remove these bodies,"

"Yes sir!" the Sergeant replies.

"We'll do what we came here to do, try and kick Mendel out, but we ain't doing it at the behest of those Blue Cosmos pricks," Colonel Park says. "Anyone who has issues with that is free to walk out of here, right now."

Nobody left the command tent.

-x-x-x-

"Kick them tires, light the fires," One of the Fireball pilots notes as they headed out to the flight line.

"Good luck, gentlemen, what little we'll need kicking these trash cans around Buffalo Grove," Vhen notes as he approaches his rather unique craft, the MFX-600A1 Skygrasper II. It may have only been half the size of the Fireball (when loaded with an extra five tons of bombs, that is), and in its weight class it was fairly slow, but it made up for this shortcoming with one major advantage: firepower. More to the point, it could also carry two Striker or Wizard packs (with exceptions) and use both of them as add-on arsenal upgrades, and his fighter was engineered that it could carry those extra packs without any maneuverability or loss of speed issues.

A heavy cargo frame was attaching the remaining components of his two Striker packs of choice for the day. On the left wing he had the classic Launcher Striker, with its weapon pod and single large Agni cannon it would be more than enough to blow through a pair of mobile suits the long way. On the right he had the new version of the Launcher Strike, which borrowed some philosophy from ZAFT's Blast Impulse in that it had two cannons instead of just one, though the combination weapon pod from the original remained. The catch was, the pod had been redesigned modular, so it could be changed from side to side on the machine without issue. Thus he had two anti-ship vulcans, four barrels of missiles, a full size Agni, two of the Agni Mini, and all the standard weapons of the Skygrasper II. Technically he had more firepower right now than a Fireball Aerofighter, but he only intended on rubbing that in the Earth Alliance's face. And maybe a Mendel MS pilot or two, if he could get a good opportunity for it.

As Vhen approached his craft, he looked it over for any signs of problems like leaks, frayed tires, missing rivets, dents, commonly called 'hangar rash' by pilots. No such signs; since Vhen moved from the terminally weak Oceania Air Force in New Zealand to Mendel Aero Corps, he had come to respect the mechanics of Mendel's aero forces. Prior to coming to the Cosmic Era, they had not fought a full-scale war in over twelve thousand years, yet they existed as if they were at war at all times. The constant infighting inside their own ranks constantly refreshed their sense of duty and skill, honing their armed forces to a razor's edge that the Earth Alliance would never be able to duplicate even if the whole EA military was special forces. And when they came to Mendel, they brought all their lore, their skills, and their incessant drive to maintain their skills with them. It all added up to a crack team that could take a half-blown-apart fighter and have it flight ready in a week or less, and routinely did. Since the battle had begun in Chicago, the amount of available Fireball Aerofighters, including casualties, had steadily but in a small quantity _in_creased.

Vhen had flown the Fireball and immediately fell in love with it. He aced the Fireball in months, and had even experimented with the efficiency of making his own omni pods for use, particularly around the 90mm Rotary Autocannon. After all, the ability to tear a Mobile Suit down to chunks in one volley of autocannon would have made him an instant nightmare to the Earth Alliance. It got even better for him, however, as his unit CO seconded him to a special research project for developing and testing the Skygrasper II. A marked improvement over the Skygrasper, especially in survivability, it also beat out the F7D Spearhead, which was damn near a joke with wings when compared to even Mendel's smaller omnifighters like Sabutai and Visigoth, and the Skygrasper II beat out ZAFT's Agile attack helicopter, though this was little of an accomplishment as even Mendel's Apache IIM was more than a match for several of the Agile.

In the year it took Mendel to get the Skygrasper II up from a consideration to a working prototype (which Vhen was getting ready to climb into), the Earth Alliance had discreetly leaked that they were preparing the Fxet-550 Cosmo Grasper for space defense. Heh. A wing of said fighters had decided they wanted to convert a non-weapons maneuver training exercise of a star of Mendel Fireballs into a live-fire exercise. Vhen was one of the fighters participating in the debris field training, and responded immediately to their locking up the formation. In one stroke he obliterated six of the woefully pathetic Cosmo Graspers with ATM 9 racks that he was experimenting with, and chased the remainder of their formation off (with an extra three kills) with Medium Pulse Lasers and a banzai charge that made his teammates shit bricks when they reviewed the battle back at base. After all, the Fireball has more armor on one wing than some Mobile Suits have across their entire frame, and the Cosmo Grasper does not have armor at all, which makes for a spectacular shredding of a Cosmo Grasper in a deliberate collision on Vhen's part. It was said in some circles that the Cosmo Grasper pilots could be heard yelping all the way back to base after that incident.

Vhen jumped into the cockpit and begins immediately locking in his pilot's armor with the various restraining cables built into the cockpit. Survival gear was taken to the max by the Magi, as a pilot is a very expensive thing to train only to chance losing him or her when they had the technology to increase survival rates. One of the things he had learned in the survival course refresher was that a pilot's armor was capable of withstanding the detonation of a mark 19 'baseball' grenade in contact with the armor, and can reliably withstand repeated hits from armor-piercing assault rifle rounds at a distance of over 75 meters. And the best part of that protection was that it came with less than 1 percent loss of maneuverability, the jointing of the armor was so well engineered it flexed just as would a human body part. A close second was that all his instrument information was displayed on the helmet HUD, and his sensor suites would even work and show what he was looking at if he was looking backwards.

His crew chief climbed partway up the ladder. "What'll it be for disposable stores today, Star Captain?" she asks as the Caterpillar Cargo Track pulled up behind his fighter.

"Give me a centerline drop tank, a pair of four-racks of conventional 500-pounders, a pair of three-missile Maverick racks, a pair of two-racks of AMRAAMs, and as many Aphids as you can fit on the outside pylons," Vhen requests, giving him a good combination of long-range, short range, air to ground and air-to-air munitions, not to mention the veritable arsenal his fighter already carried. Until he used the disposables they would slow him down, but not so much that he was completely crap out of luck. If the fireballs took off heavy themselves, he would actually be slightly faster than them. And as the first pair of Fireballs thundered down 6 Left, rotating up as they crossed the 4000-meter marker on the runway side, they were indeed loaded heavy like he was about to be. A pair of Charlie-variant Fireballs, he could tell by their wing silhouettes, loaded with 60 500-pound bombs each to give them plenty of mass destruction to spread around the ground they were about to overfly.

As Vhen had requested the ordinance, she had tapped it into a small PDA-style device, and once he finished she hit the send button to upload the order. Within a minute the loader lifters had rolled out of the cargo bay on the Caterpillar and each moved to their respective wing. The final touch was a Marine moonlighting as an ordinance technician had pulled a centerline 1-ton fuel tank out on a wheel gantry and pushed it into place by only the strength of his armor, then jacked it up and began locking it into place as the other ordinance technicians began installing the racks with his weapons. The fuel tank he would use to get this monster off the ground, and a monster it would be if someone actually put it on the scales. His full ground takeoff mass would be just shy of 95 tons, 45 tons of that being fighter and the rest being the two Striker Packs and his bomb load. Thankfully the Striker packs had extra thrust of their own to offset at least part of their mass. Were he using IWSP or Aile packs, there would not be a fighter in the skies (and precious few missiles) capable of catching his craft.

Three minutes later, his craft finished settling as the gantries were pulled away. All the weapons checked green, armed and ready to be deployed. "Ready to go, Star Captain Ra," his crew chief notes.

"Are we taking bets on how far my boot is going to go up Windam ass today?" Vhen asks as an aside.

This elicited a grim chuckle from the Loader Lead. "I got twenty on you scratching at least a dozen on your own, sir," he says.

"Only a dozen? I'm hurt," Vhen replies with a savage smile.

"See you on the flip side, Star Captain," the Crew Chief replies as she hits the toggle for the cockpit to close. The bubble canopy came down and locked forward, ready to take flight.

"Tower, this is Grasper, requesting taxi instructions, over," Vhen requests on the tower frequency.

"Grasper, Tower, you are cleared from your gate (4) to Taxi Echo. Depart ORD Airspace from 6 Left, initial heading is 3-8-5 at five thousand meters and switch to command net six, over," the Tower controller says as the wing walkers take position to guide him out of his gate and into the main ramp corridor headed to the assigned taxiway. In the usual fashion of lighted baton signaling the wing walkers kept him from clipping a wing on another object (as if there was hazard of that), and got him lined up to head down the ramp to the main taxiway. Once he was in the center of the ramp corridor he immediately turned hard left as signaled and throttled down to the main taxiway, then right down the taxiway to where he was supposed to go toward the far end of Runway 6 Left to take off. Ahead of him another element (pair) of Fireballs launched, this time more heavily loaded down with air-to-ground guided missiles. If the Earth Alliance thought the Fireballs were a pain in the ass prior, they were about to get a dose of hyperwar as practiced by Mendel.

The sound the Fireballs made as their engines went all the way to the firewall was something demonic in and of itself, though the sound only got more sinister as the Fireballs rushed past. Another pair was waiting in queue just off the edge of the runway, and as the pair on the tarmac gunned it the two that were waiting moved onto the runway surface and jammed their throttles to the max then hauled back, to make sure their engines were ready for gunning it. Satisfied, they requested takeoff clearance and in thirty seconds they jumped off the starting position, headed down the runway accelerating hard and fast. And now it was Vhen's turn. He advanced to the takeoff position and gave his fighter a hammering, to make sure the engine would go for it, and it did not fail at any level. Above the maintenance routines, Mendel's in-house engineers had started elite and only improved with the addition of aerospace engineers from Morgenroete, forced to flee when Onogoro Island was overrun by the Earth Alliance. "Tower, Grasper on 6 Left, requesting permission to take off, over," Vhen puts out.

"Grasper, Tower, you are cleared for takeoff. Good luck, Star Captain Ra. Give 'em hell."

"Aff," he replies in Magi fashion as he hammers his throttle. His fighter accelerated hard down the runway, a distinct engine sound among many taking off today, and shortly he reached the prerequisite takeoff speed of 225, then hauled back on his stick to bring it up into the air. A flick of the gear control brought the wheels up and sealed them into the fuselage, and just like that his craft was airborne and already climbing. As his craft passed the ORD outer beacon he switched to command network six, which immediately put his communications on and began blaring a monologue from another of the pilots. "So I says, 'Answer that and stay fashionable'."

"It's not funny any more, Harley," someone else says on the net. Someone else blew a raspberry at the same time.

"I'll tell you what is funny," Vhen notes as he continues climbing. "The life expectancy of these Earth Alliance trash cans in Buffalo Grove."

"Ah, Star Captain Ra, good of you to join us," the combat controller says as he tops off at 5000 meters AGL. "How you loaded today?"

"Agni cannons, missiles, bombs and some air-to-air. Cannons in the wing roots." The paired lasers were marvelous for taking out Mobile Suits, but for taking out enemy air the paired autocannons were more effective by the numbers, as the physical trauma imparted the targeted aircraft usually did as much or more than a laser that blew straight through it.

"Roger that, you're going tankbusting today until I say otherwise. Set your system to controller six subnet 34 and standby for a hunting patch. You may be loitering for up to fifteen while the rest of our forces get airborne."

"Roger that," he says with a sigh. Waiting is what usually drove him batty, he figured, though the enemy had to know by now they were about to get ram-fucked. Without the courtesy of a reach-around.

-x-x-x-

"Holy shit," Colonel Park swears as he read over the report from the forward observers and the real-time recon satellite that was still active over central North America. Over 100 fighters were in the air, at least a dozen of the Spectre Gunships that had already torn his forces to shreds, whole droves of helicopters, infantry, Mobile Suits, even the remnant hovercraft of the 4th Mechanized had come out of the woodwork and were getting ready to bear down on him.

"I take it from the ghost-white color you just took on, we're fucked," the Major immediately below him requests for clarification.

"Pretty hard, actually," Colonel Park says with a small shred of humor as he hands over the report. The Major read it up and down once, then nodded thoughtfully. "Everything that Mendel doesn't have stripped down for repair and maintenance they have in the air, headed veritably right for us. The fact that our dear departed theater general could not keep up the pressure on their southern flank means we just lost any hope for a conventional victory here."

"Should we prepare to retreat?" A Captain asks.

"Too late for that. If we knew this half an hour ago we could have gotten away with only token losses, but right now if we ran dead out for the Canadian border maybe two of us would make it. I'll leave it to your imagination which two would be the survivors." He sighs, wearied of the battle already and now resigned to becoming a greasy stain on the ground somewhere. "No, we hold this line. CentCom may be able to get the forces necessary to exploit our breach, but that is only if we can hold this position like it's the last piece of tenable land on the planet."

"So, basically, if we fold here, that's it for the war in North America?" the Major asks.

"Yes and no. The fighting will rage for some weeks, still, especially around Washington DC, California, and down toward Panama, that is if the latter hasn't already been taken by the USSA." Initial reports had filtered down to him that the USSA was 'reclaiming' territory it lost to the Atlantic Federation in the prior war, and that included all countries south of the southern Mexican border as well as all the islands south of the continental United States, up to and including the Key Islands off the Florida Coast. Their new General, Edward Harrelson, had some balls to be playing that kind of game, but the Colonel did not deny him the luxury of the opportunity. With Mendel basically converting the whole Earth Alliance military into steel-laced hamburger from end to end, to anyone with balls this was now a case of 'free for the taking' on anything prior owned or annexed by the Earth Alliance. And it went without saying that Mendel had the largest appetite at this feast. "No, Major, if we lose here, you can write off the whole of the North American theater and all the world's meaningful pockets of resistance. There won't be a single force left in theater that can stand up to the Mendel maneuver formations."

"Then who does that leave?"

"ZAFT, if anyone. Aube lacks the balls to properly stand against anyone except when clearly threatened. The USSA and Mendel are good friends, same with the Kingdom of Scandanavia and the Equatorial. ZAFT would be the only other player out there, and I don't know what Chairman Durandal would do if Mendel wins here."

"Probably crawl up his own bum-hole in abject terror," the Major replies. "I thought Blue Cosmos was bad, but God save us from the righteous wrath of those from another dimension," he says as he gives the report another once-over. "Should we just order the men to start digging themselves graves?"

"That is what it amounts to, but no, I want you to relay to all officers that if they get pressed too hard they are to surrender. At least then we have a chance of surviving some of this battle."

"Right," the Major replies skeptically as he turns to the radio officers. Shortly the word was out on the unit general frequency that Mendel was coming in force and they weren't going to take prisoners unless people got out of their machines and honest-to-God surrendered. Some balked at the orders, mostly Blue Cosmos pricks in that lot, but the whole unit knew that hell was coming on afterburners, and there would be no compromise, no glory charge. This was the final stroke.

-x-x-x-

"Vulture six to command, I roger order package," the pilot replies to the order to begin the assault. "Vulture team is moving in now, will begin area saturation at this time," he notes. "All right, girls, fire up those guns!" the pilot orders of his loading crew. He was allowed to say that and get away with it, since he was the only guy on the Spectre IIM crew at all.

The first two loaders switched on the four G27A2 10mm Beam Gattling Guns, which were amazingly effective when used on the top of armor forces or when used on light targets like infantry and jeeps. "Ten-millies armed, sir," the first loader replies immediately.

Number three among them had the task of the two oldest weapons on the gunship, the venerable M61A1 Vulcan guns, in 20mm. Something more respectable against medium game, the 20mm was nonetheless also very effective against infantry, in that slightly overkill fashion. "Twenties are go," she replies.

"Toni! Rika! Feed me the cluster canisters for the 120s!" the main loader orders. A pair of stacks of five shells was fed into each of the 120mm short-charge autocannons, the guns raised into battery.

The final step for their craft was to load a round into the Sniper Artillery Piece, which they started with a high explosive shell. That accomplished, the breech was slammed shut and locked into firing.

"Loader reporting all weapons live, cluster shells in the 120s and a common shell in the big boy," she notes to the cockpit.

"Lovely, let's get this party started," he says. The other fifteen of the Spectre teams were already arming just as he was, and the anticipation was all over the radio net.

The co-pilot had the thought of their day: "And yea, though they walk through the shadow of the valley of death, we shall fear not their evil, for the Spectre **is** death from above," she recites the Spectre's de facto motto.

-x-

"Roger that, command, Apache Lead moving to position now," Star Colonel Erika replies as her team surges forward in a line abreast, getting into positions of cover where the mast-mounted sensor suites could track in on the hostile forces around the area.

As the helicopters moved, the did so from one location of cover to the next. In even suburban hell, there were always trees that could be used for cover by helos, though the more common implementation of this was to use a two-story commercial building for cover.

"All right, Erika, I got something," her pilot says. "Looks like...enemy mobile suits moving left to right on the horizon, possible reinforcements. Anything closer is concealed right now," he notes.

"Horizon is out of range," _just barely_, Erika thinks. "Pull down the latest JSTARS pass and parse it," she orders, referring to a Magi and Star League technology used by space warships to aid ground forces. JSTARS was initially a United States invention to facilitate rapid coordination of ground strikes by air forces and ground action in evolving battles, but the Magi took it a step further. The original JSTARS was mounted on a large-body civilian jetliner converted for the job, the Magi version was mounted on the ventral structure of Warships and Monitors. It had a massive field of view and accuracy to track in on anything as small as a cigarette pack if necessary. And with Magi computing standards, the system could literally scan anything it could see that small and classify every object it targeted in minutes.

"Roger that, checking now." Ten seconds elapse. "I got a whole slew of targets on JSTARS, including reinforcements from Earth Alliance Linear Tanks coming in from Wisconsin. Where do you want to begin?"

"We just go south to north, no questions asked. You heard the Century Commander's orders. Kill 'em all and count the leftovers."

"May Existence have mercy on their souls, for we shall not," the pilot says with an obvious grin to voice.

-x-

"Aff, command, Warthog with nine rogers orders and kill zone. We are moving at this time," the commander of Warthog Star notes. "All right, kiddies, time to go piss in the pool."

"I have altered the pool. Pray I alter it no farther," one of his point says in a voice that almost exactly mimicked Darth Vader from the ancient movie Star Wars.

"Point, weapons checks," Warthog Lead orders.

"Two, good," "Three, ready," "Four, ready," "Five, horny," "Six, Cocked and locked," "Seven, go," "Eight, no contest," "Nine, no prob," "Ten, good," they all chant in series.

"Parse targets from JSTARS and build your shootlists, people. As much as I would like to overkill the shits, no sense wasting good ordinance we'll need another day."

As each pilot pulled down the target arrays for their kill zone and the neighboring kill zones (in case they had to poach another unit's patch), the unit coordinated their strikes in an almost-random pattern that allowed the whole unit to weave across their hunting grounds and likely dodge most AA fire from the ground. This also made the most efficient use of time and ordinance, two things Mendel personnel loved to make sure they got right.

"Ready, boss. We'll end up servicing just about every target in the zone, less a few minor ones."

"TOW Missile trucks, hardly a real threat to us or the ground forces," Warthog Lead replies. "It'll do, we'll strafe the little toy trucks on the way back to base, if command doesn't order us to loiter."

"DoomKomenForYa!" The Star Commander's wingman shouts without a pause between words, which elicited a chuckle from some of the more grim of their ranks.

-x-

"Aye, Command, Grasper is good to go at this time. Where do you want me?"

"Do the right flank, bust whatever you can get your sights on. Also keep an eye out high for enemy air, we think we've shot down almost all of their planes but we can't confirm that right now," Vhen's controller replies.

"Trash cans with wings," Vhen mutters. "If they had any brains, they would run home to mama and stay there."

"Nobody expects them to have brains, Star Captain," the Controller Lead says on his frequency. "After all, they are Earth Alliance. Brains are for their so-called command structure, not the shooters."

"Aye, sir, Grasper moving to requested attack vector," he says as he reefs his fighter into a turn to head toward Lake Michigan. After he got out over the lake he recommitted in toward the enemy right flank, where he would be blazing a swath through a 'target rich environment' as the old saying went. Civilians had been evacuated already, since there was no sense in letting them become hors d' combat, which meant that he was shooting at targets in an urban game of slap-happy.

It must have been a sad state of affairs for the enemy, Vhen figured. They had two years exposure to Mendel and still had not perfected a fighter worth his time to fight, much less fly. The Spearhead class of fighters did not even count as target practice as far as he was concerned; one good shot of just about anything and those shits were toast. The SRM-6 rack under each wing on the Skygrasper II was technically overkill in such a shooting situation, just as was the 35mm cannons in his wing roots and the four barrels of 30mm cannon in his nose. The missiles were just sugar on the top of the rest.

"This is Grasper, I have sight on an enemy column. Tally Ho! Left at eleven o'clock low!" He says as he turns in on them and lines up for his first attack run of the day. "One path to glory, tank drivers, a thousand pounds of explosive to HELL!" he shouts before snapping back the bomb release trigger.

-x-x-

There was no sense in hiding in the tent at this point, Colonel Park figured. He stepped out and observed the skies as the sound of the enemy fighters approached his position. Already in the distance he could see the green streaks of beams headed up toward the skies, though no explosions heralding the destruction of an enemy fighter. The Battlemechs, Mobile Suits were easier to hit by far when compared to the Fireball Aerofighters, and that was not the only thing he could see in the sky. Much closer, the forces on his flank got raked by a low-altitude fighter pass, one that screamed close and pulled up into an lazy roll back southbound.

"Colonel, we got allied air forces from a pair of _Spengler_ carriers coming in from the north part of Lake Michigan," the Major notes, his ear to a radio. "And...looks like a few of those _Arkansas_ and _Danilov_ ships are going to close up to aid us as well," he notes.

"Good God, pull them back, pull them back now!" Colonel park half-shouts. "If those fighters get a whiff of ships in the area, they'll sink them in a heartbeat!" Even though Colonel Park was ground forces, he knew that it only took one well-placed five hundred pound bomb to turn a destroyer into a floating monument to how stupid the ship's Captain really was.

In all reality, the Colonel knew it was too late before he said it. Mendel's medium fighter Skygrasper II proved him right in that sense, as he watched it dive down below some trees, then as it came back up a thunderous explosion like no other he had heard. "So, that is the sound of a ship blowing up," the Major says. Ships normally did not blow up in practice, unless you hit one of their fuel bunkers or a poorly-engineered ammo magazine. Just like in theory a Mobile Suit was not supposed to blow up, though in practice some did because the fuel tanks for the jump jets were poorly engineered.

And then, the real symphony of destruction started. It was a slow start, an explosion here, a crackling of cluster bombs there, nothing real major at first. Then, as the real weight of Mendel's aero forces came down upon them, the real sounds of thunder in the distance began. Colonel Park stepped back into the tent as another of the ships out in the lake blew out, likely in the same fashion as the first he heard. There was no hope for them, he could tell. Just death in the near future.

Death was confirmed on the radios, as reports came in from one unit after the next of long-range missile attacks, longer range than the Earth Alliance had effective weapons for, and as often as not from an unknown source and unknown tracking until the last moment. Attempts to confirm the reports were useless, as by the time the Operator tried calling for confirmation, there was no response on their frequency.

The Major was actually using the reports of failed callbacks to plot their advancement on both the ground and in the airstrikes, and a pattern was emerging. Two spikes were being driven through the front lines, as the air forces would clean out most of the major resistance and then provide secondary support as the ground forces—heavy Mobile Suits, some Gundams, some Battlemechs, and tanks of multiple sizes pressed forward into the cleared areas and finished off the remainder. And the distance overland between himself and the nearest spike could already be measured in kilometers, not tens of kilometers.

"We're being exterminated," the Major notes coldly, watching the latest reports file in, then failed confirmation requests.

"Cockroaches in a Bronx apartment, and Mendel's got all the Raid they will ever need," Colonel Park confirms. He had lived in the Bronx years before, and he knew all the old jokes. Including the American military joke he had 'rebuilt' to suit this situation. In fact, in everything but the governments and the location, this scenario matched the original joke about the Soviets driving through the Fulda gap into the heart of Germany to a tee. And there was practically nothing he could do about it.

"Prisoners?"

"Two reports say they are taking prisoners, but that is kinda sparse."

"Keep our men under cover, Major. The less exposure we have, the better. We cajn't win this one conventionally, so we might as well give them as much resistance as possible, instead of making ourselves targets. Follow?"

"Aye, sir," the major replies.

"Sir, they're going after our Mobile Forces without reserve," the Radio Operator nearest him adds. "Wouldn't it be best for our personnel if we had them evacuate all tanks and Mobile Suits to surrender?"

"Sir, they're annihilating our forces," the major notes. "Can we surrender?"

"Colonel!" The west flank is reporting an enemy surge! Armored Marines, Hover tanks escorted by fixed-wing and rotor-wing aircraft! Best distance three kilometers from here!" As if to confirm it, the pace of explosions from that direction picked up so drastically as top drown the rest of the battle out.

"Good God," Colonel Park gasps. Not only was he being outgunned from the south, he was now being outgunned and outflanked on the west.

-x-

"Six, give 'em a Tungsten Tornado," their CO orders.

"Aff, Star Colonel," the Captain of Vulture Six replies.

Though the Spectre IIM could be considered 'dog slow' compared to the faster, sexier heavies, it was far from too slow to survive in this environment. In fact, the Earth Alliance seemed to have a massive problem tracking and targeting even the massive Spectre IIM, making their kill-to-casualty ratio just short of absurd for what their mission profile was.

Six climbed an extra hundred meters and armed all its guns into the present firing loop, then prepared to give them hell on the ground. "All right, ladies, stack those 120-millies, we're going hot on some ground-pounders!"

A muted cheer came back in response, since it was not on the intercom band. As the pilot lined up on his IP (initial point), he began the lazy turn around the target point on the ground, which was a strongpoint of four Windam Mobile Suits with heavy firepower, some tanks and infantry, trying to defend against the oncoming hovercraft. When his reflector gunsight centered on where he wanted the shells and slugs, he depressed the trigger. The vibration was insane, worse even than what happened when an A-10 lit off its main gun, but he still managed to keep the guns on target.

The result on the ground redefined 'horrid' in the average soldier's opinion. The attack used was the point attack method, also known as the Tungsten Tornado for the appearance it gave off when you looked at all the tracers in a time-lapse photography of an impact point. In this fashion, the pilot could int theory create a 'tornado base' as wide as he wanted it, limited only by his ammunition on board. This time, the pilot had drawn a fifty-meter-wide circle around the perimeter of the strongpoint, where the enemy had built their fortifications and were manning them. Immediately, one of the Windams took the hammering, then another, as the guns on the Spectre IIM savaged it from altitude and put literally one round of ammunition per square inch of its exposed back, legs, arms and head, ordinance ranging from 10mm HEAP to 20mm API to 120mm Sabot to even the 350mm Standard Explosive Sniper round. This attack, lasting only on target for three seconds, was enough to shred apart the Windams in question.

As the attack continued around the circle, it was joined by missile bombardment from the various units closing up on the strongpoint and the rest of the line. Faced with death from above and death from afar, the Earth Alliance soldiers immediately began scattering radially away from the strongpoint, many having dropped their weapons and just flat out running hard and fast away from the charnel house that minutes prior had been their best bet for defending their objective. Running was not an option for the Windams, fighting was even less of an option due to the distance of bombardment. The third Windam gave up its ghost from ELRM missiles that found it without restraint, the fourth ate it from concentrated barrages of LRM missiles and a Gauss Rifle slug from a Regulator as it tried to shoot at some of the closing enemy forces. Two hurried shots is all it got, neither striking a Mendel unit, prior to the Gauss Rifle slug tearing its head and left shoulder clear off the rest of the frame.

"Gods, these Windams are nothing more than cheap trash cans on legs, hardly target practice," the copilot of Vulture Six notes.

"Indeed," the Star Commander and Captain of Vulture Six replies. "Crew, ammo check,"

"Minis show 97 percent."

"Vulcans show 96 percent."

"120s show 98 percent."

"Sniper reporting 95 percent."

"Wonderful, we've got plenty of ammo to frag down the enemy. Lining us up for an area attack, people, be prepared to spread the wealth," the Captain replies.

"Is that some kind of pervert invitation?" the main loader for the Sniper asks.

"Only if you want it to be," the Captain replies with a tone of half indignation, half resignation.

-x-

"Grasper, Angel, looks like you did their squids real well, I show two _Danilov_-class leaving the engagement area at flank speed, over," the Combat Controllers on the JSTARS aircraft note to him.

"Just returning unto them the fear of the Gods, Command," Vhen notes with his usual disdainful tone of anything ground or naval. "Have we found the enemy command section yet, over," he requests

"Aff, Grasper, I show their location at grid 136 by 611, heavy encrypted radio traffic in that area, SigInt (5) suggests possible command for regiment level or better. You are authorized unlimited assault zone at this time, over," the Controller to which he was assigned orders.

"Aff, Command, making a pass at that location now, see what's over there. Over and out." Vhen ejects his drop tank for fuel, taking care that it would land in a thicket of trees so as to not crush some poor bastard's house, and adds power while reefing his fighter into a hard turn headed for the grid where the command center was suspected to be.

As he was in route, he passed over the front line of the counterattack, and noticed a few of the Mendel Gundams were in a tight spot against some enemy Windams. Specifically, while he was passing over them, he noticed that two of the Strike machines had ejected their striker packs, since they had taken hits and were of little use with a large hole in them. One retained the Schwert Gewehr of the Sword Strike, the other had gone down to barebones shield and beam rifle.

Before he advanced any farther he tripped the TLCG (6) on his targeting panel, and it immediately registers a trio of Windam machines at just under two kilometers ahead of the advancing ground forces. An assault 'mech had moved up to take and dish the heat, but it was still a ground-pounder and the enemy was dug in, making it best from his point of view to a kill. As soon as his TTS grabbed the targets, he released the solutions to a trio of the Maverick IIM Block XVI air-to-ground anti-armor missiles. This done, he dropped the trigger on all three of the missiles, which immediately caused the three missiles to jump off the rails and zero in on their intended targets. The flight time was absurdly short, five seconds and three Windams went down with massive holes in vital components in the upper body of the suit. In one case the head had been literally blown off the enemy machine and could be seen rolling for a hundred meters behind the suit, which coincidentally crushed several fleeing enemy infantry.

"Damned trash cans," Vhen veritably spits his contempt. "Groundies, you kids all right down there?"

"Roger that, flyboy," the Assault 'mech waves at him.

"Have those two Strike-F units prepare to receive new packs," Star Captain Ra says as he reefs his fighter around in a sharp turn to come in on a deploy vector for the packs.

"Ready, sir," one of the pilots says. If he did not know better, the Star Captain would have sworn he had shared a couple of beers with the pilot in the past two weeks...

As Vhen reached a certain point he ejected the two Striker Packs, Which would allow the pilots to jump up into their glide path and connect them to their Gundams, thereby resupplying them in the field, which technically was the purpose of his machine. The maneuver went off without a hitch, as his machine registered that it no longer had the Agni cannons and the associated gunpods he now had less weapon options and only marginally increased maneuverability to offset the loss of firepower.

_Still and all, I'd only need a popsicle stick to kill these maggots off_. He switches his radio over to the universal Guard frequency. "Hey kids, why don't you pukes send me some fighters to play with? Killing all your crunchies on the ground isn't a challenge any more," Vhen notes on the open frequency. There was no response.

-x-

"I'm glad he's good enough to cover his ass when making a comment like that," Warthog Five notes.

"He's elite," Warthog Lead notes, having been briefed in on the project once upon a time past. He turned down the opportunity to try out one of the Skygrasper II machines, but supposedly Mendel liked them enough that they were building them. Quite a lot of them, actually. "All right, Warthog, it's time to get down and dirty with these pukes like nobody's business. Break it down by elements and have at them," he orders.

"Enemy suits moving in the open, our kill zone, sir," Warthog Two notes.

"Do 'em, Two," the Lead replies.

"With pleasure," he says as he dives five hundred meters. Warthog Two took the lead as One vectored in on a gun emplacement. Both dropped their bombs at the same time, but came up with wildly different damage patterns. Warthog One (the Lead for the Star) dropped four of the 250-kilo bombs on the nest of four anti-aircraft guns, which immediately caused the nest to shred and detonate in a hail of secondary explosions as the ammunition that was supposed to feed the 125mm cannons cooked off violently.

The attack on the Mobile Forces was more spectacular in execution. A pair of 500-kilo cluster bombs, each weighing in at half a ton, were dropped a second apart, one on the near side of the formation, the other on the far side. As they reached a predetermined distance to ground the cases blew open from linear shape charges detonating inside and driving the panels outward, releasing hundreds of baseball-size submunitions. The little bomblets cascaded down on the enemy column trying to retreat northwest, and each explosion tore up anything it struck, man, vehicle, Mobile Suit, ground, building, no mercy. Nothing was left standing as the explosions finished.

"Heads up, two! Pair of helos taking off in the distance, possible threat type craft!" the Lead shouts.

"Locking up west bandit," Two replies immediately as he switches from ground to air tracking. Immediately the TTS locked both up, though he only uncaged one AMRAAM on the westernmost.

"Fox Three!" Warthog Lead half-shouts as the AMRAAM IIM leaps off his aircraft and immediately turns to engage the helo.

"Fox Three!" Warthog Two shouts thereafter. Six seconds later, one helo, then the other blew out spectacularly as the flaming chassis fell to the ground it had just cleared.

"Warthog Lead from Angel, advise Falcon has greyhounds (7) in the air at this time, presumed course has them through your zone. Recommend altitude angels ten at this time, over."

"Warthog Lead rogers your last. All right, Hogs, bring it up to ten and turn on your CCIP computers, we're still hunting until the missiles pass nearby," he orders.

"Lead, Seven, I got—whoa! Ground fire, ground fire, hostiles identified! On C3!" The beams could be seen coming up at the craft as it dodged. "I'm hit! Shit!"

"Seven, lead, Green at 180, get your ass clear! Five, go Sniper (8) on those shits!"

"Roger that," Five replies immediately. "HARMs uncaged, firing!"

HARM missiles actually did not have to use their own radar to track, they used the radar systems of the enemy against themselves. The enemy was good, one of them turned their radar off, but the other three in his unit did not. The first three found their marks and practically obliterated the Windams. The fourth also struck, since the enemy machine had not moved the missile continued in to strike where it was last seen, which happened to be less than a meter from where it was now.

"Splash four," Warthog Five replies. "Should I drop them a pair to make sure?"

"Neg, we're good for now," Warthog Lead replies.

"Seven reporting, I'm still good to go right now, he didn't bust my armor."

"Reengage at this time," Warthog Lead orders, since the friendly cruise missiles had passed under them already.

-x-

"Apache Lead, Angel, what's your status?"

"Two kilometers out from suspect enemy command position. Ground forces are moving up nicely and taking over everything we immolate, over," Star Colonel Erika replies immediately. "Enemy presence is thin in this area, hardly a proper threat to us."

"Roger that, be advised that Grasper is conducting independent ops to help thin out the enemy mobile forces in the area, you will have assistance during your advance."

"Roger that, Command, I have visual on Grasper at this time," Erika notes as said fighter pulled out of a dive-bombing attack on a target in the distance. Two marks disappeared off her C3I tally of enemies in the combat theater, which made things all that much easier for her. "Continuing engagement until further notice," she notes as she builds a new shootlist to begin hitting with missiles. "All right, need a volunteer to move forward and start spotting,"

"Gotcha, Command," Six says as he moves forward and low, keeping down in the weeds to avoid being tracked by the enemy. It took him nearly three minutes to close to a kilometer range to the enemy CP, though it was worth the wait. When they got into position, they had more than enough targets for her Star to engage, in fact she had to filter some lower-level targets out that they could sweep and eliminate with the 30mm Ultra Autocannons, which were more destructive than the older 30mm Chaingun that it replaced. "Enough for you guys to shoot, boss?"

"Get ready to spot for more missiles than you'll care to think about today." She prepares her own arsenal, which included both the Hellfire IIM and the 70mm FFAR, known colloquially as Hydra. Hydra did not have the ability to eliminate heavier targets such as APCs and main battle tanks, much less outright eliminate Mobile Suits, but enough of them could cause serious damage and when used against lighter targets they were supreme.

"Just so long as nobody runs a rocket up my arse, we'll be all right," the Gunner on Apache Six notes.

"Don't tempt me, boy," Erika replies, and meant it. The Star Colonel had been subject of more than a few rumors about her conduct in bed, and not all of them were 'straight' as things went.

"All right, I have ten channels up and ready for you guys, start dropping the bombs."

Two kilometers back, the first ten missiles launched, followed eight seconds later by the second wave, and another eight seconds saw the third wave. Thirty missiles would be enough to seriously compromise their garrison, she figured.

"Shit, I'm locked! Truck on the ground with missiles and a laser designator!"

"Keep them locked! I'll deal with it!" Erika half-shouts as she waves her pilot forward. Without hesitation he dropped the nose, giving himself some serious forward thrust as the gunner unlocked the 30mm Autocannon for use on the pukes in that truck. The truck noticed the cooperative move, and immediately retargeted from the non-threatening one to the one that was bearing down on it. Her pilot jammed the collective to the roof and rotated the craft to the right, to perform a climbing sideslip away from the enemy's field of fire, but it was not fast enough. A volley of missiles were launched at them, tracking in on the laser for guidance that was still on the chopper despite3 the wild maneuvering.

The chaingun made a ratcheting sound, definitely not a sound of a small-bore autocannon going off, and something even less welcomed by Erika. "Shit! Gun jam!"

"Shit!" her pilot replies, though for a different reason. Four of the ten missiles found their mark, one even managed to pass through the rotar blades before detonating above the craft. The other three struck the nose and side fuselage of the craft, though because the Apache IIM had been hardened over the years with Heavy Ferro Fibrous plating the missiles did nothing more than pock the armor.

"Go rockets! Get me back in there!" Erika shouts after her body stops vibrating from the explosions that just rocked the helo.

"Roger that!" the pilot replies in kind as he side-slips back over to where he could see the enemy vehicle. They were trying to flee the combat area now that their munitions were expended, but Erika had no intention of letting them away. As she put the sights on target she fired off six rockets, 70mm FFAR rockets that were expressly built for this purpose. After a flight of three seconds, the truck blew out, with a couple arms of the crew clearly visible in the spall kicked out of the passenger cabin.

"Excellent flying, thanks," Erika was convinced one of those missiles could have been a cockpit hit.

**CLANG**. "We ain't out of the woods yet," the pilot says, given that whatever had made that sound was somewhere inside the chopper.

**CLONG**. "Is this thing going to hold together?"

**WRAAM**. "I hope so," and afterwards they heard not a creak or groan from the chopper, which was a positive sign...for now.

-x-

Colonel Park had the seemingly disheartening feeling of watching as two of his Windam were badly mauled by the Skygrasper II fighter. As it passed over a pair of Stinger man-portable SAMs were fired at it; one fell short, one struck and barely even jarred the craft, much less caused any notable damage. The fighter continued on its course, looped around, and drilled in again, this time with guns blazing as it made a strafing pass with its machine cannons and autocannons, just before dispensing with an internally-carried missile and dropping—of all things—the disposable ordinance rack he had carried a load of bombs on. The missile struck a personnel sandbag fort and converted it into a hail of sand particulate, wood chunks and body parts flying in several directions. The bomb racks hit the ground shallow and skipped, the right rack bouncing off an APC, the other rack skidding across the ground and tearing personnel in half and removing limbs as fifty kilograms of metal conflicted with running personnel at very high speed.

In the face of that, the first missiles that came into his base area from the west were a rather rude shock, though unmistakable as the sleek, sexy Hellfire upgrades that Mendel used with significant alacrity from helicopters. There had been some reports of helos moving through that area, and he had seen a pair of the Spectre IIM craft operating behind his lines, though in the end he expected nothing. Mendel was the side orchestrating this merciless slaughter, though by all accounts his tent should have been one of the first hit, not just the APCs and few Linear Artillery units in the area.

His Mobile Forces were veritably dead already. All that was left was the screaming, and the Colonel could sense Mendel would drag that out in as savage a fashion as their laws would allow them to. So far, that was showing to be a hellishly long distance, as far as he could tell. There were a lot of Earth Alliance forces fleeing north, a lot had passed through the perimeter of his HQ area, many telling tales of how ruthless the Mendel forces were cutting down everything hostile in their path, and how the civilians were even taking shots at the Earth Alliance infantry.

"Colonel, we don't have more than spit and bailing wire left. Are you going to surrender us, or do we stand here and get slaughtered?"

Given that the order to get slaughtered had already once been given today, and the same Major had fragged that General in question, the proper answer was about obvious. "We surrender, immediately."

The attack helicopters that had done the shooting moments prior crested the treeline around his encampment, though as they closed up this was under threat, because a Buster Dagger had uncovered itself from hiding under a pile of debris and immediately popped off a pair of shots at the helos, one from each of its weapons, before firing the missiles in its shoulder plate. One of the copters took a hellish flak blast from the Gun Launcher, another took the beam square in the side. Neither chopper went down, but immediately there was a response of missiles fired at the Buster Dagger without restraint, and four strikes put it down hard.

If only to make things more complicated, the enemy Infantry and hovertanks from last night took that time to show up, busting through the treelines that surrounded the clearing he had secured for his headquarters and dropping in from above by way of transport helicopters that Colonel Park had never even known existed in Mendel's forces. The Infantry made an assault drop from the fifteen transport helos, where they dropped clear of the choppers while they were still flying to land skidding on the ground below, with only their jump jets to soften the landing. In less than a minute he was greeted by a full Trinary of Armored Marines, more than enough to silence any infantry and even most Mobile Suits in the headquarters area.

"Doesn't it make you feel all warm and fuzzy?" the Major asks as the Infantry begin their approach march while covered by the large (and expensive) Condor and Fulcrum Hovertanks.

"That isn't the phrase I would have preferred in this situation," he says as two of the Marines take aim at him even as they advanced.

"Hands up, boys," the unit lead says, a rather interesting female voice behind the command.

As the Colonel began raising his arms, gunfire erupted in close proximity, gunfire of the heavy weapons kind that told him the Earth Alliance troops were still not giving up. A pair of heavy machine guns in a sandbag nest opened up on the Marines, and though very heavily armored each one instinctively brought their shields in line with the firing point. In immediate counter, four of them brought fire on the nest with assault rifles, while a fifth maneuvered to get a better position on the fort before conducting his attack. The ten-tube missile packs on his shoulder plates belched four missiles that struck the sand fort dead on and detonated on the far side of the sandbags, without a doubt immolating the two gun crews and flinging body parts for a hellish distance. The Colonel's guess as to the trooper's gender was a supposition—Colonel Park could not identify a bustline on the trooper, unlike the one in front of him which had a somewhat pronounced chestplate.

"Will they ever learn?" the lady Marine in front of him asks.

"Likely not," another of the Marines in her point notes. Clearly a guy's voice, and older than the Marine in question. The sniper rifle he carried could be none but the legendary and feared Shortbow-class Sniper rifle, capable of punching holes in Mobile Suit cockpits and killing the pilot behind.

"Hey Gina, should we open up the command tent?" A third member of her point asks. This one was also a lady, and almost sounded sultry in the saying.

"Adel, Jill, give me a hand here," Gina says as Dale finished up using Zip-ties to secure the Colonel and the Major. As follow-on Marines closed up with them, three of the Marines used the opportunity to literally lift the tent's steel pole frame up and flip it over, revealing the whole of the command tent's personnel and activity to the rest of the world. So abrupt, unexpected was their action that the personnel inside simply stared, not even a reaction from them until the Marines began closing up on them.

There was one of the Radio Operators that pulled a pistol and began firing, though her life ended rather abruptly as the Marine she was firing on 'bunked' her, a catcheism for the Pilebunker anti-infantry-armor weapon carried by some die-hard Marines. The slender penetration rod hammered into her chest just below the sternum and slightly angled upward, then fired the spike in a half-meter to complete the penetration. The spike exited the radio officer's back grotesquely, flinging blood for several meters behind the struck trooper as the sound of the spike hammering forward caused several of the personnel in the tent to jolt in a partial panic.

"Sorry, kids," Gina half-apologizes out loud. "You are now isorla, the rightful property of Mendel. Cooperate and you may survive to see tomorrow." There were some venomous looks she got from the personnel, but most of them were scared and showing it.

"Sierra Gulf Eight to Charlie Tango, requesting vector to the front, over," the radio nearest Gina requests.

Not lacking a sense of humor, Gina picked up the radio handset. "Sierra Gulf Eight, your radio controller will have to call you back after the war's over. This Command Post is no longer available for arranging dates on the fly, over," she replies.

"What the fuck? Who is this?" the rather enraged Sierra Gulf Eight asks immediately.

"Point Commander Gina, Mendel Armored Marines. And y'know, you sound like a reasonable guy and all that, what say you stop your formation and surrender yourselves, we can talk this over after your dumbass leaders are dealt with, over," she says almost nonchalantly.

"Fuck that sideways, honey, I'm outta here. Later," he notes in a rather worried tone.

"Okay, your big bad, then, over and out." Gina drops the microphone on the table.

"I think you came on to him a little strong, boss lady," the fifth of her point notes. Again, Colonel Park could tell it was a lady.

"Thank you, Victoria," Gina says. "All right, all of you hands up, move to the counter in an orderly fashion. Go, now," she orders.

-x-x-

"Angel, this is Grasper, I have retreating Mobile Suits north of my present vector, six marks that are runnign and jumping north as fast as possible, over. Did someone tell them to get lost?"

"Neg, Star Captain," his flight controller replies. "We just took the headquarters tent. Apparently without a local command staff they know they are whooped and are not hanging around."

"Pussies," Vhen noted with a wearied sigh. Something about them having no challenging craft in the air right now did not thrill him whatsoever. "Anything left for us to do?"

"Negative, you are cleared to return to base at this time,"

"Roger that," Vhen notes. As he began his turn in toward the base, something caught his attention on the radar. "Whoa, command, this is Grasper, I have contacts on radar, two marks at 0-8-5 coming in fast," he notes.

"Roger that, Grasper, we see them. Except, we see four contacts at this time, we are typing them right now." A pause of ten seconds. "Grasper, Angel, confirm four contacts, two Skygrasper, two unknown contacts, gross mass estimate 35 tons. Advise caution. Bandits are not responding to all-frequency call to identify and divert, may be headed for O'Hare at this time. You are authorized to intercept."

"Roger that, Angel, Grasper is moving now," Vhen turns his fighter in and takes it down low, as Warthog and Falcon Stars (Fireballs) passed over his course a thousand meters higher, headed north to harry the enemy even more and hopefully force their retreat into a rout.

With the fighters closing on each other at an absurd rate, contact was not short in the coming. Vhen took care to lock up the Skygraspers first, since the other two were unknown contacts they could easily be smaller civilian transports and shooting them down, while permissible since they did not respond to radio calls, would definitely not reflect well on him or Mendel. That being done, Vhen released a pair of AMRAAM missiles to deal with the targets, and fired them off the rails without incident. The missiles actually did not use active radar, they locked onto the enemy's own IFF systems and followed them in, the pilots blissfully unaware that they were being targeted.

The explosions in the distance as the small Skygraspers were chunked by the AMRAAM missiles was spectacular, and somewhat relieving to Vhen, as a Skygrasper actually had enough firepower (when equipped with IWSP or Launcher) to take his fighter down. In the distance he could see no evidence of a parachute, and immediately came to the conclusion that life was tough, and tougher if your commanders were stupid.

Not having seen where the missiles came from, the two remaining enemies maneuvered hard while looking for the enemy and other missiles. Their efforts were blown, however, as Star Commander Ra closed up to visually identify the craft in question. As he turned in on their flight course he kept the Skygrasper II down 'in the weeds', where enemy sensors would have major problems even seeing his craft, much less tracking him. A couple of times he even tore branches out of trees with the wings of his craft, he was keeping it that low.

As he came up on the craft, he noticed they were nothing like any other known Earth Alliance fighter he had dealt with. These were fixed-wing, non-VSTOL, fast in a line but the small wings and control surfaces would provide shit for maneuvering room. Additionally, as he trailed them low and close from behind, he could identify no hard-mounted weapons...and only one bomb?

His appreciation of history provided the answer. Vhen had seen pictures and news reels of the Pre-CE nuclear arms, specifically the gravity bombs used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the bomb in front of him matched many of the characteristics. He was flying trail on a pair of nuclear-armed jump bombers, new planes of the Earth Alliance. And they were out for blood.

"Raid warning, raid warning, possible nuclear-armed Jump Bombers at my location, I am engaging now," Vhen says as he hauls back on his throttle to open up distance on them. To confirm his fears, his Enhanced Sensors finally returned a material scan that reported those were plutonium-based bombs they were carrying.

"Grasper, Angel, you're it, nobody else is close enough to stop them, take those things down, take them down now!" the Controller was still professional, but quite the hint of panic was in her voice.

"Fox four!" he shouts as he unloads his Aphid AAMs at the two fighters, one right after the next after the next. His final missile jumped off the rail as the first impacted the starboard Jump Bomber, shredding it to bits. The bomb remained intact as it fell with what was left of the fuselage, and the pilot ejected clean, meaning that the bomb would not go off since it was not armed to detonate. Being Infrared missiles, the tracked in on the nearest heat source and as such targeted the now-violently-shredding first fighter, and ignored the second.

Vhen did not ignore the second, he switched over to his cannons and sighted up. "Guns, guns, guns!" he declares as he depresses the trigger on the 30mm Machine cannons and the 35mm Autocannons. The burst of fire did not miss his mark, and the guns tore into the nonexistent armor on the enemy Jump Bomber and right into the superstructure of the fighter. Immediately the fighter's engines failed, though it continued to glide as more rounds tore into its flight surfaces and left wing. This time, however, Vhen had the singularly horrid experience of seeing the bomb drop off the craft before the canopy blew out and the pilot ejected.

"Shit! Bomb away!" Vhen says as he deploys his air brakes and hauls back on the throttle to nothing, to avoid overshooting the bomb. "I'm taking a shit, stand by!" With a pair of toggles on his radar console, the Enhanced Sensors immediately locked onto the falling bomb, and he switched controls over to the integrated turret-mount ER Large Laser on the top of his craft, which replaced the more costly and more destructive but less efficient beam cannon on the original Skygrasper.

With some creative rudder work and a quick prayer to any Gods out there listening, he snapped off a shot.

The bomb falls, falls, continues falling, and finally lands in a civilian house somewhere in Palatine Heights. Someone must have heard and listened, Vhen thinks with a wry sense of humor about it, then applies power and climbs out of his dive with meters to spare before he would have hit the ground a block east of the bomb. It would later be found that his laser shot had obliterated the neutron gun and the main arming circuitry for the bomb, rendering it inoperable and incapable of detonating.

"It landed, no detonation, repeat no detonation," Vhen notes on the open frequency.

The cheering on the frequencies drowned out everything else he could have heard at that time.

-x-x-x-

(Day four, 1145 hours)

"Vulture Six, touchdown," the pilot of the Spectre IIM says over the radio as his craft lands and immediately begins slowing down toward nominal taxi speed.

Colonel Park had actually already been pressed into bondsmen service, which he readily accepted, and his first order of duty was to aid in recovering the bombs. The lady that had her house crushed by one of them was rather irate about that, but she changed her tune when she realized that the bomb in question was a nuclear bomb and it going off would have meant certain death for her and the cats.

"These things aren't light," one of the Armored Marines notes.

"Aye," a Sapper Battle Armor trooper notes as he assists in picking the bomb up.

"Twenty-five hundred kilos of pure whoopass," the Armored Marine notes as they heave it up onto the trailer with the help of a crane gantry. "Nuclear weapons are very efficient for their cost and manpower requirements, but they are rather indiscriminate for what you get. That's why we haven't used any in this war yet," the Marine says.

"Makes sense," Colonel Park says as he finishes winching it into place and begins strapping it down to the trailer.

"Bomb Recovery from Angel, come back," the AWACS Controller puts out on their frequencies.

"Go," the Marine replies.

"Star Captain Ra wants a piece of the tail fin off that bomb, over."

"Roger that, he'll get it," the Marine replies as she finishes up strapping the bomb down. With a quick slash of her heat knife she stripped off two parts of the tail fin for him. "All right, let's move it out to the other bomb!"

"You say so," the Quartermaster who was driving the truck replies. "Hey, we recovered those pilots, right?"

"Yeah, we had Marines waiting for them as they hit the ground. One of them shot himself dead before he got to the ground, the other is in lockup awaiting trial for War Crimes. I don't expect he'll live through this week," the Sapper trooper notes.

* * *

Author's Chapter Afterword:

A straight air assault of epic proportions, and the Earth Alliance is left quaking in their boots as even the nuclear option is sent to hell in pieces. If it came off as sort of a one-sided slaughter, that is how I intended it. Mendel's through playing nice, though the real proclamation of that is still to come.

I think I rather enjoyed covering four aspects of an air campaign at once, since that gave me four different methods of conducting the battle to work with, and the intendant chaps that working in that many directions can typically cause. Spectre was a good one, since it is the quintessential death from above platform, the Fireballs are the Mendel mainstay and very well suited to ground support, Apache IIM is an excellent platform, capable of carrying over 8 tons of external stores (with a deprecation of aerial speed at that time, of course, until some of them are used), and the Skygrasper II is its own work of art.

Much thanks to **FraserMage** for the Skygrasper II design and pilot. Always an excellent turn of course to work with a new character and unit. Not to mention, the Skygrasper I kicks ass, but could stand some serious improvements, which I think I achieved here.

Now, this is only day four, and the battle is a hellishly long way away from done, so stay tuned as the action heats up to the boiling point, despite the veritable fail condition the Earth Alliance already has. Nobody has given up just yet, so...

Next up: With the offensive in the north brought to a brutal halt, the two sides pause to size up their situation. In this time of silenced guns, Mendel's Sepcialists take to the ground in force, doing the things they do best.

* * *

Review Replies: Two reviews from readers this time around, thank you once again for the reviews and in this case ideas as well.

Knives91: The Earth Alliance got what they paid for, comrade. And as to why there were no reinforcements, the reinforcing MS and Gundams had been drawn down south to combat there, where it appeared the real battle was.

FraserMage: The prototype Skygrasper II is indeed in action, and the first production Skygraspers shall be in deploy soon enough, given what Vhen just did with his.

* * *

The Gripe Sheet:

No gripes today.

* * *

Footnotes:

(1): **N**ational **C**ommand **A**uthority, another name for the leader of the country.

(2): A little bit of a reprise of a line from the movie The Longest Day, which is about the landings at Normandy in WW2. Very good John Wayne movie, as well as a cast of absolutely killer actors from several other countries. If you are a history buff, I highly recommend it.

(3): To retain the partial means that the magazine he fired only a few rounds out of is still held, in case he needs those extra 85 rounds later in the fight.

(4): Gate in this usage is a parking spot for a plane.

(5): **Sig**nals **Int**elligence, a form of espionage that seeks to derive the importance and purpose of a target by how, how frequently, and how wide it transmits, above and beyond what they can or cannot break of the encryption.

(6): **T**arget **L**ock **C**ircuit **G**round, a system by which Enhanced Sensors can track a ground target steady as the equipped craft maneuvers hard. TLCG can even be used to maintain lock on a ground target behind the craft, and can also feed off the C3I network.

(7): Greyhounds is air code for friendly cruise missiles.

(8): Code for using ARM (Anti Radiation Missiles) on an enemy anti-air threat.

* * *

Murphy's Laws for this section:

(Mendel): The mark of a truly superior pilot is the use of his superior judgment to avoid situations requiring the use of his superior skill

(Mendel): Your cannon will jam in combat, and then when you get back to base there will be nothing wrong with it.

(Mendel): Loud, sudden noises in a helicopter WILL get your undivided attention

* * *

TRO Sections:

**AeroTech 2 Vessel Technical Readout**

**Class/Model/Name**: Skygrasper II (Dual AC)

**Tech: **Mixed Tech / 3067

**Vessel Type: **Aerospace Fighter

**Rules: **Level 3, Standard design

**Mass: **45 tons

**Length: **15 meters

**Power Plant: **135 XL Fusion (C)

**Safe Thrust: **5

**Maximum Thrust: **8

**Armor Type:** Clan Ferro-aluminum

**Armament:**  
2 Heavy MG (C)  
1 Skygrasper Missiles (C)  
1 ER Large Laser (C)  
2 SRM 6 (C)  
2 Ultra AC/2 (C)

**Overview:**

The existence of the Skygrasper II is really a combination accident and engineering marvel. Whereas Magi technique is to either build something from the ground up or copy an already successful design to their purpose, the Skygrasper II is actually the result of both of the above. The original Skygrasper Support Fighter used by the Earth Alliance was copied from scans of the original Archangel-class ship that had one on board, but realizing its limited usefulness Mendel engineers set about improving it for both space and atmosphere operations. This was born the Skygrasper II.

**Capabilities:**

The Skygrasper II takes its forefather and adds seriously increased capabilities to the equation. This also comes with the serious cost of the craft being far larger than its predecessor, though this is not considered a major weakness in the end as it puts this increased size to very good use. The fifty percent increase in mass is the casualty of redesigning the airframe to be usable in spaceborne operations as well as in a ground support role, though the other major factor of increase over the predecessor is cost—one Skygrasper II costs as much as two of the Earth Alliance Skygrasper as well as the cockpit and nose section of a third.

Whereas the original Skygrasper comes out to weighing in at thirty tons fully loaded, fuel and ammo but not including any striker packs, the Skygrasper II weighs in at 45 tons in either of its major configurations. This increased mass allows the Skygrasper II to carry two things sorely lacking on the original Skygrasper: Significant weapons and significant armor. The performance envelope has been increased from the original craft, allowing the Skygrasper II to live up to its name with a 25 percent speed increase over the original as well as the option to carry external stores (bombs and missiles) that was sorely lacking on the original. This is due to the 135XL Fusion engine that replaces the small turbine engine of the original fighter, and this capability also allows the craft to operate in space.

The intent of the Skygrasper II is the same as thew original Skygrasper: a support fighter to being unto the battlefield a change of armaments for the Strike Gundam, though this has been augmented drastically. First and foremost, the Skygrasper II can equip up to two Striker Packs, and these packs do not have to be matched. Second, equipping Striker Packs does not drastically alter the performance envelope of the craft, or at least as drastically as on the original. The capability to mount one Striker Pack is translated from the original, as well, in cases where the necessity of carrying two is nil. Also, the hard points for the Striker packs come with modular connections allowing for the use of ZAFT's Wizard Packs or Silhouette Packs, with one exception being the use of the Nautiloucca Wizard pack that does not match the craft's profile.

The arsenal from the original has been revamped for heavy close-quarters and long range engagements, and the resulting striking power gives the Skygrasper II more than triple the firepower of the original. Gone are the four 20mm Machine Guns and the 30mm Machine Cannons of the original, replaced by two 30mm Machine Cannons and two 35mm Ultra Autocannons, a significant markup in both striking power and range. The single beam weapon turret-mounted has been swapped out for a similar-mounted ER Large Laser, which is both more powerful and has a greater range by double. Rounding out the balanced diet of the Skygrasper II is a pair of SRM 6 launchers mounted just under and slightly behind the leading edge of the wing immediately outboard of the Autocannon mounts. Translated from the original is the Skygrasper Missile Launcher system, though the system has been reduced from two launchers to one, though with double the ammo overall at ten missiles. All in all, the Skygrasper II is a well-rounded attack platform made only the more deadly by the inclusion of its striker packs, as its first major battles prove.

The Skygrasper II is armored by five tons of Ferro-aluminum armor, giving it veritably 220 percent more armor than its predecessor as well as the capability to withstand the holy of anti-air holies, the feared beam weapon. When coupled with the increased speed and maneuverability, this capability only makes the craft even more survivable, as the Earth Alliance fighters that it faces off against are not capable of catching it nor are they capable of outmaneuvering it in close quarters. It is reported that in the first engagement by this craft, the pilot took three separate beam rifle hits and was able to continue the fight unhindered.

The Star RT6 and Star RC6 Targeting and Communication systems built into the airframe give the Skygrasper II the capability to track up to 72 separate targets and the computer is capable of using pre-programmed and on-the-fly-programmed databases to identify and classify every target it can track. This information is presented to the pilot in a hierarchical manner than can be sorted by combat threat, anti-air threat, command structure, naval assets, flying assets, fixed (ground emplacement) assets, or by any factor of range to target or firepower carried by the unit. With this information, a pilot is capable of engaging up to 16 of those targets at the same time. The system is the first that is fully capable of receiving data feeds from the Magi C3I network, but cannot act as a point source within that network without removing a weapon component and replacing it with the C3I computer. Thus a Skygrasper II can receive tactical communications and database updates on the fly, but cannot spot for another craft or ground forces in that fashion.

**Battle History:**

The battle history of the Skygrasper II started in blood and has only become more so in its short duty to Mendel. The first prototype was used initially to challenge and bloody a flight of Earth Alliance Cosmo Graspers in the space nearby Mendel, where the pilot was able to singlehandedly eliminate or chase off the whole flight with shock tactics and superior firepower.

In the skies above Chicago, the Earth Alliance Air Forces quickly came to dread even thinking about facing off against the Skygrasper II. With its ability to carry nine tons of external stores as well as its whole compliment of internal weapons and even two Striker Packs, no combination of aerial assets were able to stand up to the Skygrasper II for any length of time. The first Skygrasper II is credited with over twenty air to air kills in the first three days of combat, not including cruise missile intercepts and craft that had taken off and were killed within ten seconds of liftoff.

The Skygrasper II proved itself flexible enough to be used for ground attack, air defense, naval attacks, close air support of friendly ground forces, and even high-priority intercept. So flexible was the craft that it literally attacked enemy shipping, ground forces, air forces, and intercepted a nuclear-armed jump bomber all within the same one-hour time period and without refueling or rearming. This flexibility has lent itself to the Mendel procurement board, who have requested several wings to be outfitted with the lower-cost Skygrasper II.

**Variants:**

One production variant of the Skygrasper II exists at this time, which trades in the single ER Large Laser in the turret and the paired 35mm Autocannons in the wing roots for a pair of ER Large Lasers mounted in the wing roots in the same space taken up by the Autocannons. In addition to the lasers, this variant also increases the close-range ante of the fighter by adding another pair of 30mm Machine Cannons to the nose of the fighter.

As of this briefing, due to the almost-inhuman success of the first Skygrasper II prototype in the skies above Chicago, a larger and more powerful version of the Skygrasper II is being planned, though details on it are sketchy at this time.

**Deployment**

With the wide capabilities of the Skygrasper II, the fighter is destined to be deployed far and wide as soon as Mendel's manufacturing capabilities match the demand for the fighter. With roughly half the combat capability of a Fireball Omnifighter (when considering that it is normally armed with a Striker Pack) and less than a quarter the cost (also including the Striker Pack), the Skygrasper II may be destined to overtake the venerable Magi stalwart in the Mendel Aero Core, though for some applications it cannot beat out the old dog Fireball or the specialized craft that Mendel also employs.

BATTLETECH SPECIAL RULES:

The turret-mount ER Large Laser can be rotated to fire in any direction in a turn, though it can only fire once per turn. If struck in the side, roll 2D6 separate of any other critical hits. On a roll of 12, the turret is locked in position and cannot change direction until repaired. Treat the aiming arc for this weapon as per the level three vehicle turret rules in Maximum Tech.

The Skygrasper II can carry nine tons of external stores, which includes bombs, missiles for space or air use, and fuel tanks. Doing so reduces its air speed one point per five tons as per normal Aerotech rules.

Striker Pack rules: The Skygrasper may central-mount one Striker pack or may mount two packs offset halfway down the back of each wing surface. When struck in the rear, roll 2D6. On a roll of 10 or greater, the Striker Pack takes the hit instead of the craft. When shot from forward or the sides, roll 2D6 and on a roll of 12 the Striker Pack takes the hit instead of the craft, if a location carrying a Striker pack is hit (wings in the case of tandem-mount, body if a single mount). A hit against the nose will never result in a hit against the carried packs. See the rules below for additional rules pertaining to each pack classification. Keep in mind that the craft must have a minimum of 3 Safe Thrust to take off from the ground, and that is inclusive of any reductions caused by carrying a bomb load. Thus, a Skygrasper II may not take off from a ground-based launch with nine tons of external stores, a Sword Strike and a Launcher Strike, for example. Five tons of bombs would be the max in this scenario.

Using the packs: Keep in mind that normal rules for exceeding a craft's safe thrust apply when using any thrust-boosting pack. Thus, there is a severe chance of damaging or destroying the internal structure of the Skygrasper II if a pilot gets to hot-rodding using a pair of Jet Striker packs. Care must be exercised when using high speed maneuvering in this fashion. Each pack is considered to have 40 points of armor, and can take damage when the plane is shot from the rear. When the armor of the pack is gone, the pack is considered inoperable. An inop pack reduces the craft's thrust by one point and completely nullifies any maneuver bonuses it may have had. If the pack had any fuel rremaining internally, that fuel may explode (piloting roll required, fuel detonates only on a failed roll with a MOF of 2 or worse). Detonated fule causes damage to the craft at a rate of 1 point per 10 points of fuel remaining.

Weapons mounted on the packs are considered part of the craft's normal onboard arsenal for handling during battle.

Deploying the Packs: as is the purpose of the Skygrasper, the Skygrasper II can drop a pack to a waiting compatible Mobile Suit or Gundam. This is done by overflying the target hex and making a piloting skill roll with a +2 to-hit modifier. If the roll is successful, the pack is dropped properly. If the roll fails by a MOF of one or two, the drop is aborted and can be retried. If the MOF is three or worse, the drop is executed but the pack crashes if dropped in atmosphere and is considered inop for use. In space, the pack misses the target mobile suit and continues on the plane's prior heading and speed. The Gundam in question can attempt to catch up to and mount the Striker pack at that time.

Ejecting Striker Packs: A pack may need to be ejected during battle if it is too severely damaged to be used. This is accomplished during the end phase of any turn, and is done by a piloting skill roll with a -1 to hit bonus.

PACK INFORMATION:

Aile Striker Pack: When equipped, the Skygrasper gains two points speed from the engines on the pack. The pack also carries an extra four tons of fuel that can be used by the Skygrasper. The shield mounts over the left wing surface, and hits from the left side that strike the left wing may strike the shield instead of the wing. When struck in this fashion, the pilot makes a piloting roll with a +2 modifier to the roll. If he succeeds, the attack strikes the shield and not the craft. The shield can absorb 300 points of damage before being destroyed. The beam rifle of the Aile pack is considered a Heavy Large Laser for determining damage and range, and applies no heat to the Skygrasper II. Cost per pack is 2.0 Million C-bills.

Sword Striker Pack: This pack does not modify the Skygrasper's maneuverability. Like the Aile, the Sword pack comes with a shield that can block incoming shots from the left, though the modifier is +3 to the piloting roll. The grapple line can be fired out and latched onto a target to aid in turning, where it can reduce the straight movement modifier for in-atmosphere flying by one hex per turn facing. It can also be used as a wrenching weapon, in which case it causes thirty points of physical damage to the targeted enemy unit, one hundred if the other target is in the air and headed in any direction other than with the Skygrasper. When used in this fashion, the pilot makes a piloting roll to avoid losing control of his craft after the attack. The sword can be dropped down to slash targets, and rather than a gunnery roll this is achieved by a piloting roll with a -1 modifier to the dice. If the roll fails by a margin of three or more, the Skygrasper collides with the intended target. If the sword strikes, it causes 75 points of standard-scale damage. Cost per pack is 3.0 Million C-bills.

Launcher Striker Pack: This pack reduces the plane's maneuverability by one point if tandem-mounted, but does not reduce speed if mounted alone. The combination weapons pod is mounted on the right side of the craft and can fire to targets on the right of the craft per the same firing arc as a vehicle's side. The 120mm Anti-ship Gattling is considered a Rotary AC10 Autocannon for damage and range purposes with thirty rounds of ammo. The Grenade Launchers on the Combo Pod are considered one-shot Tunderbolt 20 launchers with a -3 to-hit bonus due to them being guided missiles. The hyper impulse cannon Agni may fire forward only and is considered a standard laser with 100 points of damage per hit out to extreme range. Cost per pack is 5.0 Million C-bills.

(CUSTOM) Launcher II Striker Pack: Unlike its original version, this pack increases thrust by one, so it can neutralize the speed reduction by the original Launcher Striker pack, and the fighter is capable of compensating for the reduction of speed on one side and the increase on the other. The pack carries an extra two tons of fuel to help compensate for the mass of the pack. The Combo Pod on this pack is modular and can be fit on either side of the craft, making it ideal for offsetting the original Launcher Pack. The two Mini Agni are considered standard lasers for targeting purposes and each inflicts 75 points of damage out to long range. Cost per pack is 4.5 Million C-bills.

Lightning Striker Pack: This pack makes no modification to the Skygrasper's speed in air, but reduces turning costs for the craft in space combat to 1 point of thrust per 2 hexsides turned. The pack also carries five extra tons of fuel. The EM Rifle carried by the Lightning pack can be used as a standard Gauss Rifle and carries three tons of ammunition. Cost per pack is 1.5 Million C-bills.

IWSP Striker Pack: Like the Aile pack, the IWSP pack provides a significant boost in maneuvering, to the tune of +2 points per pack, and also incorporates an extra five tons of fuel. Unlike the Aile pack, the IWSP also provides a drastic increase in firepower. The shield follows the same rules as the Aile Striker shield, but includes a Rotary AC/2 for additional firepower forward (and three tons of ammo). The pack itself comes equipped with two gauss rifles (6 tons ammo) and two Autocannon 10s (6 tons ammo), and all four weapons can be fired without issue at the same time. The swords on the IWSP pack conform to the rules of the Sword Striker pack, though the MOF for crashing into an intended target is only 2 instead of the 3 for the Sword Pack, due to the shorter swords used by IWSP. Damaged caused by the swords is 50 points per blade that hits (roll in the same fashion as a SRM 2). Lastly, the beam rifle for the Aile Strike is translated over to the configuration as well. Cost per pack is 5.5 Million C-bills.

Gunbarrel Striker: The Gunbarrel pack affords the Skygrasper II an increase in speed of one point and carries an additional two tons of fuel. The 35mm Gatling carried by the Gunbarrel Striker can be used to fire directly to the rear or directly to the front, depending on the needs of the pilot at the time. Like the IWSP Gatling, this is considered a Rotary AC/2 with three tons of ammo. The four gunbarrels each carry two Thunderbolt 10 one-shot missiles and a Clan Medium Pulse Laser, and can be used to perform an all-range attack. To do so, a pilot will roll a piloting roll with a +1 modifier per Gunbarrel used. If successful, the pilot positions all the gunbarrels used in proper locations and may conduct a separate attack from each Gunbarrel with a -1 to-hit bonus from each barrel. A failure means that only part of the packs made it in place, depending on the MOF of the roll. If the MOF is four or above, none of the barrels got into place. Cost per pack is 5.0 Million C-bills.

Doppelhorn Striker: Though never used on the Strike, the Doppelhorn is considered compatible with the Skygrasper II. This pack reduces the maneuverability of the Skygrasper by one but adds three tons of fuel to the craft. The Doppelhorn's armaments are considered Arrow IV Artillery for determination of damage and effects. Each Doppelhorn carries two of the cannons and five tons of ammo (25 shots) per cannon. Cost per pack is 3.5 Million C-bills.

Jet Striker: Though never used on the Strike, this pack can be used with the Skygrasper in atmosphere only. The Jet pack adds an amazing three points of thrust to the craft per pack and also adds five tons of fuel per pack. The Jet Striker has no integrated weapons itself, but does have four integrated hardpoints that can each be equipped with up to 1 ton of ordinance per hardpoint at the pilot's discretion. Special adapters have been machined to allow the Jet Striker pack to carry any ordinance normally used by Aerofighters. Cost per pack is 1.0 Million C-bills.

Gunner Wizard: The Gunner Wizard pack does not afford any modification in thrust but increases the fuel carried by two tons. The Orthos beam cannon is used in the same fashion as the Launcher Strike's Agni cannon, though it does 150 points of standard damage per shot. Cost per pack is 4.0 Million C-bills.

Blaze Wizard: An increase of 2 points thrust per pack is granted, as well as increased longevity by six tons of fuel carried in the pack. The Firebee guided missiles are considered a Thunderbolt 10 per missile with a -3 to hit bonus since they are guided. The Blaze Wizard carries 28 of these missiles, and any combination of 1 to 28 missiles may be launched at a time. Cost per pack is 2.0 Million C-bills.

Slash Wizard: Each Slash Wizard increases the Skygrasper's thrust by one. The Beam Gatling guns count as two Large Pulse Lasers per gun, for a total of four Large Pulse Lasers when used together. The halberd carried by the Slash Wizard can be used in the same fashion as the Sword Strike, though a collision will only happen on a MOF of 4 due to the weapon's inherent length. Damage from the halberd is 75 points. Cost per pack is 3.25 Million C-bills.

Noctiluca Wizard: Incompatible with the Skygrasper II. If maritime attack capability is needed, the Skygrasper II can carry air-dropped torpedoes and antishipping cruise missiles. The Launcher Striker and Launcher II Striker are also good anti-ship options as well.

Command Wizard: This pack can be deployed by the Skygrasper II, though it provides no offensive options to the craft. When carried, the Command Wizard pack reduces the available thrust by two points and cannot be mounted singly (thus it is best offset with a Blaze Wizard or IWSP Striker pack). When deployed, the Command Wizard allows a person in the craft's jumpseat to act as a unit commander, and this pack grants the side with the pack a +3 Initiative bonus for each turn it is in use as per the combination Command Console and Enhanced Satellite Uplink equipment for a Battlemech. However, should the craft's primary pilot be injured, there are no controls for the unit commander to to take control of the craft, therefore he cannot take over flight operations. Cost per pack is 7.5 Million C-bills.

Providence Wizard: Completely incompatible with the Skygrasper II. The pack creates too much drag when mounted, and the craft cannot take off due to its restrictive size and drag.

Kerberos Wizard: This pack can be carried by the Skygrasper II, though its armaments cannot be used due to positioning limitations. It provides no thrust or fuel bonuses, either. If carrying this pack, it is simply for transport and delivery purposes.

Hospital Wizard: This pack may be used by the Skygrasper II but only in a tandem mount configuration with another Hospital Wizard pack. Both packs have a combination thrust reduction of 1 point, but compensate with four extra tons of fuel per pack. This configuration is typically used to ferry out severely injured personnel to a major medical station aboard a warship in low orbit or around the globe. The Skygrasper II will typically retain its armaments but will not carry disposable stores in this configuration, unless carrying extra fuel tankage. Cost per pack is 4.0 Million C-bills, when mounted in pair cost is 8.0 Million C-bills.

Force Silhouette: Like the Aile Striker, this pack provides a serious maneuverability boost without much in the way of a firepower increase. When equipped, the Skygrasper II gains three points of thrust and five tons of fuel in the pack, but has no other weapons or defenses added to its arsenal. Cost per pack is 2.0 Million C-bills.

Sword Silhouette: As with the Sword Striker, this pack does not alter the maneuverability of the carrying craft, though it does add an extra five tons of fuel to the craft. The swords may be used in the same fashion as the swords on the IWSP Striker, and each sword is capable of inflicting 100 points of damage. Roll 2d6 against the 2 column of missiles to determine whether one or both swords strike a given target. Cost per pack is 3.5 Million C-bills.

Blast Silhouette: Often considered a far larger cousin to the Launcher Striker, this pack is a drastic improvement over the Launcher though with a far larger price tag. The pack provides no maneuverability bonus or penalty, and provides no defense increase, though it does add another five tons of fuel to the pack to increase the battlefield longevity of the unit. The armaments of the Blast comes in two configurations: a series of eight single-shot Firebee guided missiles (See Blaze Wizard above for stats), or can be used as a pair of Light Gauss Rifles and two hyper impulse cannons. Both configurations cannot be used at once. The Hyper Impulse Cannons of the Blaze pack exactly match the Agni of the Launcher Strike, ergo 100 points standard laser damage out to extreme range. Cost per pack is 6.0 Million C-bills.

Chaos Silhouette: The Chaos Silhouette is arguably one of the more powerful and flexible packs for the Skygrasper II. The pack provides one extra thrust point to the craft and five extra tons of fuel. In the same fashion as the Gunbarrel Striker, the Chaos Silhouette can conduct an all-range attack using its two mobile weapon pods, though the attack only receives a +1 to-hit roll on the piloting modifier. The laser cannons in the pods are considered Heavy Medium Lasers, and the pod mounts 14 Firefly Guided Missiles in each pod (see Blaze Wizard pack for stats and rules). Lastly, the Chaos Silhouette mounts two shields, one on the right and left side, and these shields conform to the Aile Striker shields in rules and damage resistance. Cost per pack is 3.5 Million C-bills.

Gaia Silhouette: The Gaia Silhouette is completely incompatible with the Skygrasper II craft and cannot be carried by it.

Abyss Silhouette: The Abyss Silhouette is partially incompatible with the Skygrasper II. Though it can be carried by the Skygrasper II, most of its arsenal cannot be used in combat. The Silhouette pack reduces thrust by one though adds five tons of fuel to the craft. The only weapons that can be used on the Silhouette are the Balaena Kai dual plasma cannon, which can fire forward or rear and counts as a paired Heavy Large Laser for hit purposes, and the M68 Dual Cannons which can only fire rearward and are considered standard AC/10 cannons for hit purposes. The lance is mounted too high on the Silhouette frame and cannot be dropped down to attack targets. This pack is often only ferried out to waiting Impulse Gundams for naval operations. Cost per pack is 5.0 Million C-bills, making it a less than cost effective firepower additon for the Skygrasper II.

Destiny Silhouette: Like the Abyss, this pack can be mounted but has limited functionality. The pack grants two extra points of thrust to the craft and an extra five tons of fuel. The two heavy beam cannons can be fired forward only, and are considered to be equivalent to the Agni cannon on the Launcher Strike. The Excalibur swords are mounted too high on the pack to be able to deploy downward without slicing into the wing, and are therefore inoperable. The one major defensive increase courtesy of this pack is the paired Solidus Fulgor beam shields, which are mounted both left and right on the craft as per the Aile Strike's shields, though the beam shield generators have no upper limit to how much damage they can take. Cost per pack is 8.0 Million C-bills, though many would argue the extreme cost is well worth it in defensive terms alone.

* * *

Class/Model/Name:

Skygrasper II (Dual AC)

**Mass: **45 tons

**Const. Options: **Fractional Accounting

Equipment: (Mass)

**Power Plant: **135 XL Fusion (2.25)

**Engine Shielding: (**.00)

**Structural Integrity: **5 (.00)

**Safe Thrust: **5

**Maximum Thrust: **8

**Heat Sinks: **13 Double (3.00

**Fuel: (**4.00)

**Cockpit & Attitude Thrusters: **(3.00)

**Armor Factor: **96 Ferro-aluminum (C) (5.00)

* * *

Armor Value

**(Standard Scale)**

**Nose: **32

**Left / Right Wings: **24 / 24

**Aft: **16

* * *

Weapons & Equipment:

Loc, SRV, MRV, LRV, ERV  
Heat, Mass

2 Heavy MG (C)  
Nose, 3, --, --, --  
0, 1.00

Ammo (HMG) 125  
--, 1.25

1 Skygrasper Missiles (C)  
Nose, 15, 15, --, --  
5, 3.50

Ammo (SKG Msl) 10  
--, 2.00

1 ER Large Laser (C)  
Nose, 10, 10, 10, 10,  
12, 4.00

1 SRM 6 (C)  
LW, 8, --, --, --,  
4, 1.50

1 SRM 6 (C)  
RW, 8, --, --, --,  
4, 1.50

Ammo (SRM 6) 30  
--, 2.00

1 Ultra AC/2 (C)  
LW, 3, 3, 3, 3  
2, 5.00

1 Ultra AC/2 (C)  
RW, 3, 3, 3, 3  
2, 5.00

Ammo (Ult AC/2) 45  
--, 1.00

C.A.S.E. System  
Body, 0.00

**TOTALS: **29 Heat

**45.00 Tons  
**

**Tons Left: **.00

* * *

Calculated Factors:

**Total Cost: **4,949,613 C-Bills

**Battle Value: **1,454

**Cost per BV: **3,404.14

**Weapon Value: **1,578 (Ratio 1.09)

**Damage Factors: **SRDmg 44; MRDmg 22; LRDmg 4; ERDmg 0

**BattleForce2:**

**MP:** 5N, **Armor/Structure:** 2 / 0

**Damage PB/M/L:** 5/3/2, **Overheat:** 0

**Class:** FL, **Point Value:** 15


End file.
